Coffee Country · Southern Rift
Sidama & Yirgacheffe
South of Hawassa, the green slopes of Sidama and Gedeo produce the coffees known worldwide as Sidamo and Yirgacheffe. In 2023 UNESCO listed the Gedeo Cultural Landscape, where coffee is grown in layered forest gardens beneath shade trees and enset.
Why We Go
The hills behind the world's most famous coffees — and a UNESCO landscape where coffee grows under the trees.
Sidama is the leading coffee-producing zone in the country, and Yirgacheffe, in neighbouring Gedeo, is perhaps the most celebrated coffee name in the world. Visiting during the harvest, roughly from October into the new year, means cherries on the trees and washing stations at work.
The Gedeo landscape is remarkable in its own right. Instead of open plantations, the Gedeo farm in layers: tall trees overhead, enset — the false banana that is their staple food — beneath, and coffee under that. UNESCO inscribed it in 2023 for this system and for the sacred forests and stone monuments woven through it.
Those monuments are among the most striking in Africa: the region holds a vast concentration of megaliths, and the site of Tuto Fela near Dilla preserves carved stelae partly dated to between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Hawassa, 273 kilometres south of Addis Ababa on its own lake, is the natural base.
Highlights
- 01Coffee farms and washing stations in Sidama, which grows around 30% of Ethiopia's coffee
- 02The Gedeo agroforestry landscape, a World Heritage Site since 2023
- 03The megalithic stelae of Tuto Fela near Dilla, dated in part to the 11th–13th centuries
- 04A cupping with growers, and a coffee ceremony in a family home
Best combined with a stay of 2 – 4 days, travelling October – February.
Journeys Including Sidama & Yirgacheffe
Routes that pass through here
Plan This Destination
Build Sidama & Yirgacheffe into your journey
Nothing here is fixed. Tell us how long you have and what else you want to see, and a designer will draw the route — including the flights, the guides and the hours that matter.
Speak With a Designer
Speak to someone who has been there this season
Our designers travel these routes themselves. Ask about road conditions, festival dates or which lodge has the better view — you will get a straight answer.
Or call us directly on +1909-450-7246