A photo gallery of the beautiful eastern Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa. Click here to see.
(WIKIPEDIA) – Dire Dawa was founded in 1902 after the Addis Ababa – Djibouti Railway reached the area. The railroad could not reach the city of Harar at its higher elevation, so Dire Dawa was built nearby. This led it becoming an important center of trade between the port of Djibouti and the capital city, Addis Ababa.
Dire Dawa’s first governor was Mersha Nahusenay. Ato Mersha was one of the negotiators during the Djibouti-Ethiopia railway construction (1897–1902). He represented Emperor Menelik at the inauguration ceremony as the railway reached the Ethiopian frontier in 1902, according to historians Dr. Richard Pankhurst (2010) and Shiferaw Bekele (1989) as well as other sources (e.g., Captain Alemayehu Abebe’s autobiography My Life on Land and Air, Imbert-Vier, 2011). … READ MORE