Dire Dawa City

Dire Dawa is one of Ethiopia's two chartered city administrations, alongside Addis Ababa, set at 1 276 m on the Dechatu River at the foot of a ring of cliffs in the country's east. Founded in 1902 when the Addis Ababa–Djibouti railway reached the site, it grew into a major industrial, trading and transport centre and remains defined by its railway heritage, its markets and its position on the corridor to the Red Sea. Through the SUNCASA initiative the city administration is restoring the degraded Dechatu River catchment, planting over a million trees across more than 600 hectares and creating some 7 000 green jobs, around 60% of them held by women and young people.