Current Time in Jimma, Ethiopia

Jimma is the largest city in south-western Ethiopia, lying about three hundred and fifty kilometres from Addis Ababa in the highlands of the Oromia region. It stands at roughly eighteen hundred metres above sea level in a green, well-watered landscape of rolling hills, forest patches and coffee gardens. The climate is mild and humid, with a long rainy season and comfortable temperatures throughout the year, and the surrounding countryside is among the most fertile in the country.

Around two hundred and fifty thousand people live in the city, which serves as the commercial and administrative capital of a densely populated agricultural region. Its importance rests above all on coffee. The forests of south-western Ethiopia are the original home of Arabica coffee, which still grows wild in the hills nearby, and Jimma has been the great collecting and trading centre for the crop for generations. Warehouses, washing stations, auctions and export houses shape the rhythm of the local economy, alongside trade in honey, spices, maize, teff and the stimulant leaf khat.

Before its incorporation into the modern Ethiopian state, this was the seat of the Kingdom of Jimma, a prosperous Oromo monarchy that grew rich on trade in coffee, ivory and slaves along the routes towards the Nile and the Red Sea. Its most famous ruler, Abba Jifar the Second, governed from the palace at Jiren on a hill above the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The palace, a striking two-storey timber and stone structure with wide verandas, still stands and has been restored as a monument to that era.

Visitors also come for the Jimma Museum, with its collections of royal regalia, weapons and everyday objects, and for the enormous open-air market, one of the busiest in Ethiopia, where farmers from a wide area gather to trade. Boye Lake on the edge of town attracts birdwatchers, and the forests, waterfalls and hot springs of the surrounding highlands, including the Kaffa Biosphere Reserve, are within reach for travellers with time to explore.

Local culture is predominantly Oromo, with a strong Muslim tradition in the town alongside Orthodox Christian communities. Coffee is not only an export crop but the centre of social life, and the ceremonial roasting and brewing of beans over charcoal remains a daily ritual of hospitality.

Jimma University is one of the largest and most respected in Ethiopia, well known for its pioneering community-based approach to medical and health training, and it draws tens of thousands of students from across the country, giving the city a youthful and lively atmosphere.

An asphalt road links Jimma to Addis Ababa in around six or seven hours, buses and minibuses connect it to towns across the south-west, and the local airport offers domestic flights to the capital.

Jimma is important as the heart of the coffee country where the crop first grew, a former royal capital and the leading educational and commercial centre of south-western Ethiopia.