Gambela

History

Gambela was founded because of its location on the Baro, a tributary of the Nile, which was seen by both the British and the Ethiopians as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other goods from the fertile Ethiopian Highlands to Sudan and Egypt. === British concession (1902–1956) === Emperor Menelik II granted Britain use of a port along the Baro on 15 May 1902, and in 1907 the port and a customs station were founded at Gambela. A shipping service run by Sudan Railways linked Khartoum with Gambela, a distance of 1,366 kilometers. According to Richard Pankhurst, by the mid-1930s boats sailed twice a month during the rainy season, taking seven days downstream and eleven upstream. According to Bahru Zewde, British interest in the concession was due in part to the attraction of "tapping the allegedly fabulous commercial potential of Western Ethiopia and drawing the whole region into the economic orbit of the Sudan", but also intended "to be a brilliant British countermove to avert the virtual commercial hegemony in Ethiopia that the Djibouti-Addis Ababa Railway seemed to promise the French." In fact, it benefitted the Abyssinians themselves not to have their economy in the control of a single European power, whether French, British or even Italian, and Menelik was playing a clever game of pitting his colonial neighbours against each other, to avoid any single one gaining a monopoly, whilst opening his country to the benefits of trade and technology, as part of a major modernisation drive. Although over 70% of Ethiopia's external trade passed through the port at Djibouti between 1911 and 1917, the share of goods passing through Gambela had the fastest rate of growth until the Italian conquest. The British did have to cope with the Ethiopian governors of Sayo…

Most-observed species

• Common Bulbul

  Pycnonotus barbatus (Desfontaines, 1789) · Aves
  24
• Hadada Ibis

  Bostrychia hagedash (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  20
• Speckled Mousebird

  Colius striatus J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  20
• Hooded Vulture

  Necrosyrtes monachus (Temminck, 1823) · Aves
  19
• Woodland Kingfisher

  Halcyon senegalensis (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  17
• Tawny-flanked Prinia

  Prinia subflava (Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  16
• Northern Masked-Weaver

  Ploceus taeniopterus (Reichenbach, 1863) · Aves
  16
• African Palm-Swift

  Cypsiurus parvus (M.H.K.Lichtenstein, 1823) · Aves
  15