Official Name: | Debre Zeyit |
Pushpin Map: | Ethiopia |
Pushpin Label Position: | right |
Pushpin Map Caption: | Location within Ethiopia |
Subdivision Type: | Country |
Subdivision Name: | Ethiopia |
Subdivision Type1: | Region |
Subdivision Name1: | Benishangul-Gumuz |
Subdivision Type2: | Zone |
Subdivision Name2: | Metekel Zone |
Population As Of: | 2005 |
Population Total: | 4,179 |
Timezone: | EAT |
Utc Offset: | +3 |
Coordinates: | 10.5833°N 83°W |
Elevation M: | 2097 |
Debre Zeyit (also known as Wenbera) is a town in western Ethiopia. Located in the Metekel Zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz Region, Debre Zeit has a latitude and longitude of 10.5833°N 83°W with an elevation of 2097 meters above sea level.
The town was visited in 1900 by the American traveller Oscar T. Crosby, who mentions the presence of a market and an Ethiopian military outpost.[1] Crosby knew the settlement as Wenbera, as did the consul R E Cheesman, who stayed there for a few days in April 1927. He described the settlement as "a large village of a few hundred houses and is important chiefly for its market and as a centre for caravan traffic. One set of merchants plies between there and Roseires in the Sudan, and another goes to the Abyssinian main plateau; both carry the famous coffee grown at Kitar in Wanbera district. We had reached an altitude where the Amhara can live, but the population is strongly oromo."[2]
Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Debre Zeyit has an estimated total population of 4,179 of whom 1,936 were males and 2,243 were females.[3] According to the 1994 national census, its total population was 2,429 of whom 1,120 were males and 1,309 were females. It is the largest settlement in Wenbera woreda.