Sodo

In the early 1930s, Sodo was described as the only locality in Wolaita district deserving to be called a town. It had a Saturday market, a telephone line to the capital, and a weekly mail courier. Italian ground troops captured Sodo on 27 January 1937; it was there that two Italian generals with their divisions – Liberati with his 25th Division, and Bacarri with his 101st Division – surrendered on 22 May 1941, after a minimum of resistance. The British also captured the remnants of the 21st Division, who had escaped around the north end of Lake Abijatta. The loot included more than 4,000 officers and men, 6 medium tanks, 4 light tanks, 100 machine guns, ammunition and supplies.[3]

Street of Soddo

By 1958 Sodo was one of 27 places in Ethiopia ranked as First Class Township. A branch of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia was established between 1965-68.[3] The administrator of Sodo Zuria woreda and one-time student activist, Melaku Gebre Egziahber, was arrested in 1975 for encouraging peasants and the urban poor to rise up against "exploiters" in the town.[4] In 1984, a refugee camp was established in the town for the victims of that year's famine.[3]

On 6 November 1999, police arrested two teachers in Sodo for objecting to the use of a new language in school textbooks. Student demonstrations against the arrests led to widespread week-long protests and riots. Special police units were brought in to suppress the demonstrations, and killed as many as 10 people, injured hundreds and arrested up to 1,000 others. A former YMCA camp outside Sodo was used as a temporary detention facility for hundreds of demonstrators.[5]

Prior to the Ethiopian 2005 General Elections, Amnesty International reports that some members of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces political party were amongst 200 people reportedly detained under vagrancy laws in Sodo on 22 February 2005. Amnesty International included this incident as one of a series of government intimidation of opposition party activists.[6]

Center of Sodo, Distance View

Based on the 2018 Population Projection by the CSA, this town has a total population of 254,294, of whom 125,855 are men and 128,439 are women.[7]

Based on the 2007 Census conducted by the CSA, this town has a total population of 76,050, of whom 40,140 are men and 35,910 women. The majority of the inhabitants were Protestants, with 54.61% of the population reporting that belief, 38.43% practiced Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, 4.76% were Muslim, and 1.28% were Catholic. [8]

The 1994 national census reported this town had a total population of 36,287 of whom 18,863 were men and 17,424 were women.

Established in 2007, Wolaita Sodo University (WSU) is a non-profit public higher education institution located in Sodo. WSU offers courses and programs leading to officially recognized higher education degrees in several areas of study. The university has campuses in different areas, including Dawuro Tarcha Campus. The city has numerous secondary schools of which the prominent ones are Wolaita Sodo Secondary & preparatory school and Wolita Liqa School.

Wolaitta Dicha S.C. is an Ethiopian football club based in Sodo. The club won its first domestic cup in 2017, and qualified for the 2018 CAF Confederation Cup, in which the club beat Zemalek SC and passed to the quarter-final.

• Samuel Urkato, Minister of Science and Higher Education, Ethiopia.[9]

Located in the tropics at high altitude, Sodo possesses a well-moderated Subtropical highland climate (Koppen Cwb), with a pronounced pattern of wet summers and dry winters. Despite being located in the Northern Hemisphere, Sodo is actually cooler in the "summer" than the "winter" due to much higher rainfall in the high-sun season, a phenomenon common to Sodo's region.