Bedele

Ras Tessema Nadew made his capital near Bedele in the early 1900s. Henry Savage Landor passed through the town in 1906.[1] The map attached to C. W. Gwynn's account of his 1908/09 triangulation survey of southern Ethiopia shows that Bedele had a telegraph station, connected by way of Gore.[2] The Buno Bedele Health Center was built in 1966 with a majority of Swedish donations.[1]

The road connecting Bedele to Agaro, 96 kilometres (60 mi) long, was completed in 1968 at a cost of 12 million dollars (Ethiopian), by the French company Razel Frères. Construction on a road to Metu began around 1970.[1]

In February 2009, Regional President Abadula Gemeda laid the cornerstone for a new cultural center in Bedele. At the same time, he officially opened the new technical and vocational college in the town.[3]

Bedele is the headquarters for the Bedele Brewery.[4] Founded in 1993, Bedele is a formerly government-owned corporation, producing about 75 million bottles of beer each year for domestic and export customers; it was bought by Heineken in August 2011.[5]

The 2007 national census reported a total population for Bedele of 19,517, of whom 9,837 were men and 9,680 were women. The majority of the inhabitants practised Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, with 52.9% of the population reporting they observed this belief, while 24.98% of the population said they were Protestant, and 21.44% were Moslem.[6]

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Bedele has an estimated total population of 21,289 of whom 10,556 are men and 10,733 are women.[7] The 1994 census reported this town had a total population of 11,907 of whom 5,725 were males and 6,182 were females. 90% of the residents are ethnic Oromo.