Argobba (or Argoba) is a special woreda in the

Afar Region The Afar Region (; ; ), formerly known as Region 2, is a Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in northeastern Ethiopia and the homeland of the Afar people. Its capital is the planned city of Semera, which lies on the paved Awash, Ethiopia, Awash� ...

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

. This woreda is named after the Argobba people, whose homeland lies in this district. Located on the eastern escarpment of the

Ethiopian highlands The Ethiopian Highlands (also called the Abyssinian Highlands) is a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia in Northeast Africa. It forms the largest continuous area of its elevation in the continent, with little of its surface falling below , whil ...

, Argobba is bordered on the south, west and north by the

, and on the east by Dulecha. Settlements in this woreda include Gachine. The average elevation in this woreda is 471 meters above sea level. , Argobba has 10 kilometers of all-weather gravel road and 77.5 kilometers of community roads; about 41% of the total population has access to drinking water.

Demographics

Based on the 2007 Census conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA), this woreda has a total population of 21,794, of whom 11,645 are men and 10,149 women; with an area of 393.93 square kilometers, Argobba has a population density of 55.32. While 2,166 or 9.94% are urban inhabitants, this woreda is unusual for the

in having no pastoralists. A total of 3,195 households were counted in this woreda, which results in an average of 6.8 persons to a household, and 3,397 housing units. 83.38% of the population said they were

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

, and 16.26% were Orthodox Christians.

Agriculture

A sample enumeration performed by the CSA in 2001 interviewed 540 farmers in this woreda, who held an average of 5.28 hectares of land. Of the 2.85 square kilometers of private land surveyed, 84.92% was under cultivation, 3.89% pasture, 9.72% fallow, and 1.47% was devoted to other uses; the percentage in woodland was missing. For the land under cultivation in this woreda, 88.71% is planted in cereals like

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

and

sorghum ''Sorghum bicolor'', commonly called sorghum () and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a species in the Poaceae, grass genus ''Sorghum (genus), Sorghum'' cultivated for its grain. The grain i ...

, 24.06% in pulses, 10.52% in vegetables, and 2.07% in root crops. Permanent crops included 1 hectare planted in coffee, 4 in gesho or hops, 1 in sugar cane, 12.79 in fruit trees, and 9.96 in

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

s. 10.37% of the farmers both raise crops and livestock, while 50.74% only grow crops and 38.89% only raise livestock. Land tenure in this woreda is distributed between 81.59% own their land, 16.35% rent, and the remaining 2.07% are held under other forms of tenure."Central Statistical Authority of Ethiopia. Agricultural Sample Survey (AgSE2001). Report on Area and Production - Afar Region. Version 1.1 - December 2007"
(accessed 26 January 2009)

Notes

{{Districts of the Afar Region Afar Region Special woredas of Ethiopia