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Gambela is a city in Ethiopia and the capital of the Gambela Region or kilil. Located in Administrative Zone 1, the city has a latitude and longitude of 8°15′N, 34°35′E and an elevation of 526 meters.

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Gambela has an estimated total population of 31,282 of whom 16,163 were males and 15,119 were females.^[1] According to the 1994 national census, its population was 18,263.

Gambela's population is mostly Anuak and Nuer people, each group having their own market. The town also boasts an airport (ICAO code HAGM, IATA GMB) and is near the Gambela National Park.

Gambella was founded because of its location on the Baro River, a tributary of the Nile, which was seen by both the British and Ethiopia as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other goods from the fertile Ethiopian Highlands to Sudan and Egypt. Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia granted Britain use of a port along the Baro May 15, 1902, and in 1907 the port and a customs station were founded. A shipping service run by Sudanese Railways Corporation linked Khartoum with Gambella, a distance of 1,366 kilometers. According to Richard Pankhurst, by the mid-1930s boats sailed twice a month during the rainy season, taking seven days downstream and eleven upstream.^[2]

Gambella became part of Italian East Africa in 1936, but was returned to British rule after a bloody battle in 1941 and became part of Sudan in 1951; when Sudan gained independence five years later Gambella was returned to Ethiopia. The port was closed during the Derg era, and as of 2005 it remains closed due to tension between the Sudan People's Liberation Army and the Ethiopian government, though there are hopes to reopen the port.

On December 13, 2003, in an apparent reprisal for a series of ambushes of highlander civilians, 30 Ethiopian soldiers and highlander civilians launched a brutal attack on Gambela's Anuak population. Human Rights Watch has estimated that 424 people were killed.^[3].

1. ^ CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.4
2. ^ Richard R.K. Pankhurst, An Economic History of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie University Press, 1968), p. 304.
3. ^ Human Rights' Watch website