West Nature

The capital of a coffee producing area, Jimma is a large, lively city blessed with excellent tourist facilities and a warm location in the fertile western highlands.

The town is named after the 19th century Islamic kingdom of Jimma, which lay at the meeting point of several trade routes. The last autonomous ruler of Jimma was King Abba Jiffar, whose impressive palace at Jiren, on the outskirts of the modern city, has been restored with partial funding from UNESCO.

Other attractions include the daily central market, the ethnographic displays at the Jimma Museum, a nearby patch of forest inhabited by the spectacular colobus monkey, and out-of-town Lake Boye with its resident hippos.

The largest and most accessible of three UNESCO-recognised biosphere reserves in Ethiopia’s western highlands, the 7,600km2 Kafa Biosphere Reserve is the sole home of many coffee varieties which still grow wild in the region. The reserve incorporates large tracts of montane rainforest, an important reserve of sustainable forest products such as forest cardamom, forest pepper and honey. The biosphere reserve’s main tourist centre is Bonga, a pleasant forest-fringed town which will soon open the Bonga International Coffee Museum, and has as a tourist office offering guided day and overnight walks to a stunning natural rock formation known God’s Bridge, and the Mother Coffee Tree, the world’s oldest living plant of its type.

Wildlife likely to be seen in the region includes the black-and-white colobus monkey, while a wonderful diversity of highland forest and grassland birds includes 11 species endemic to Ethiopia.