StapleEthiopia
Injera
Fermented teff pancake, at once the plate, the utensil and the bread. Teff is native to the Ethiopian highlands and grows almost nowhere else.
Serves Makes 8 · 45 minutes, plus 3 days fermenting
Berta
Muslim gold-washers and sorghum farmers of the Ethiopia-Sudan borderland whose sheikhdoms were tributary to Sennar and then to Ethiopia, and whose waza trumpet ensembles are inscribed by UNESCO.
Identity
Population: Estimated 250,000 to 350,000 across Ethiopia and Sudan
Location: Assosa and Menge in Benishangul-Gumuz Region, western Ethiopia, and adjacent Blue Nile State, Sudan
Language: Berta (Funj), with dialect variation across the border
Language family: Nilo-Saharan → Berta (an isolate branch)
Traditional governance: Sheikhdoms historically, notably Assosa, Khomosha and Bela Shangul; Islamic authority; Benishangul-Gumuz regional administration in Ethiopia.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Berta of Assosa
The largest sheikhdom and now the regional capital's area.
Berta of Bela Shangul
The sheikhdom that gave the region half its name.
Berta of Blue Nile State
Communities on the Sudanese side of the border.
Culture
Clothing: Islamic dress with jalabiya and headcloth for men, wrapped cloth and headscarf for women; ceremonial dress and ornament for the waza performances.
Food: Sorghum bread and porridge, sesame, groundnuts, okra, honey, fish from the border rivers, and the sorghum beer that persists alongside Islamic observance in many households.
Ceremonies: Waza trumpet performances at harvest, marriage and funerals; Islamic calendar observances; possession and healing ceremonies; the gold-washing seasons with their own observances.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal with Islamic contract and bridewealth; the sheikhly families historically married across the sheikhdoms and into Sudanese lineages.
Initiation rites: Circumcision in Islamic form; Qur'anic schooling; entry into a waza ensemble is itself a form of social passage for young men.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Ethiopia and Sudan, at national rather than community level — 21 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Ethiopia
11 dishes
StapleEthiopia
Misir Wat
also Red lentil stew, Misir wot
Red lentils cooked down with onion and berbere into a deep red stew. The backbone of the Ethiopian fasting table, eaten on the roughly 180 days a year the Orthodox calendar sets aside.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
National dishEthiopia
Doro Wat
Chicken stewed for hours in berbere and an enormous quantity of onions cooked down without fat. Ethiopia's national dish, served at Christmas and Easter and to any guest worth the trouble.
Serves 8 · 3 hours
National dishEthiopia
Tibs
also Zilzil tibs, Sautéed meat
Beef or lamb cut in strips and seared fast with onion, rosemary, chilli and spiced butter, often brought to the table still sizzling on a clay brazier.
Serves 4 · 40 minutes
Street foodEthiopia
Sambusa
Lentil or minced beef pastries fried crisp, sold on Addis street corners and eaten to break the fast in Ramadan and during Orthodox fasting periods in their vegan form.
Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour
Festival & feastEthiopia
Kitfo
Raw minced beef warmed in spiced butter with mitmita and served with ayib cheese and kocho. A Gurage dish that became a national delicacy, ordered leb leb or fully raw.
Serves 4 · 30 minutes
Regional specialityEthiopia
Shiro Wat
Ground chickpea flour cooked into a smooth spiced purée, the daily food of most Ethiopians and the mainstay of the 200-odd fasting days in the Orthodox year.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Regional specialityEthiopia
Gomen
also Collard greens, Ye'abesha gomen
Collard greens braised long and slow with onion, garlic and ginger until sweet and silky. The green on every Ethiopian platter and one of the fasting dishes.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Regional specialityEthiopia
Kocho
also Enset bread, False banana bread
Bread made from fermented enset — the false banana — scraped, buried in a lined pit for months and then baked flat. The staple of the Gurage, Sidama, Hadiya and Kambaata highlands, and Ethiopia's insurance against famine.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes, from prepared kocho dough
Drink & sweetEthiopia
Tej
Honey wine fermented with gesho, a buckthorn twig used as a bittering agent, and drunk from a round-bottomed berele flask. Served in dedicated tej bets across the country.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 3 to 4 weeks
Drink & sweetEthiopia
Tella
also Talla, Ethiopian home beer
Home-brewed beer of barley and gesho, the buckthorn leaf that stands in for hops. Cloudy, sour and low in alcohol, brewed for every wedding, funeral and saint's day.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 1 hour active, plus 5 to 8 days fermenting
Sudan
10 dishes
StapleSudan
Kisra
Paper-thin fermented sorghum flatbread spread on a hot plate with a wooden strip and peeled off in sheets. Eaten under every Sudanese stew, and torn rather than cut.
Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 days fermenting
StapleSudan
Gurasa
also Sudanese pancake bread
A thick soft wheat pancake cooked on a flat griddle, the western Sudanese alternative to kisra and the bread that soaks up mullah best.
Serves Makes 8 · 40 minutes, plus 1 hour resting
National dishSudan
Ful Medames
Fava beans simmered soft and crushed at the table with oil, cheese, tomato and chilli. Sudan's universal breakfast, eaten standing at a stall or sitting round a single shared bowl.
Serves 4 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking
National dishSudan
Mullah Rob
also Yoghurt stew, Mulah roub
Meat and dried okra powder stewed in soured milk, one of the great Sudanese mullah stews, poured over kisra sorghum bread and eaten with the hand.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodSudan
Ta'amiya Sudani
Sudanese fava fritters, spicier than the Egyptian version and usually served in a bread roll with salad and peanut sauce. The staple of Khartoum's morning food carts.
Serves Makes 20 · 40 minutes, plus overnight soaking
Festival & feastSudan
Aseeda with Mullah
A dome of sorghum porridge served with mullah, a stew of dried meat, okra powder and peanut butter. The dish of weddings, naming days and Eid across northern and central Sudan.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastSudan
Shorbat Adas
also Lentil soup, Ramadan soup
Red lentil soup with cumin and lemon, the first thing on the table at every Sudanese iftar and the standard opener at weddings.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Regional specialitySudan
Salatat Aswad
Aubergine mashed with peanut butter, yoghurt and lemon into a smoky purée, eaten cold with kisra. It appears on almost every Sudanese table alongside the hot dishes.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Drink & sweetSudan
Jebena Coffee
also Gahwa
Coffee roasted, pounded and brewed in a long-necked clay pot, spiced with ginger and cardamom and strained through a plug of grass. Made in the street by women who set up a stool and a brazier.
Serves 4 small cups · 30 minutes
Drink & sweetSudan
Karkade
also Hibiscus tea, Roselle
Dried hibiscus calyces steeped into a deep crimson drink, served iced through the Sudanese heat and hot in the cold season. Sudan grows some of the best in the world.
Serves Makes 2 litres · 20 minutes, plus 4 hours steeping
Stories & Oral Literature
The Waza TrumpetsMusical tradition
A waza ensemble consists of twelve or more men each playing a single long gourd-and-horn trumpet producing one note, interlocking in a hocket so that the melody exists only in the ensemble and in no individual instrument. The trumpets are made and consecrated communally, and the music accompanies harvest, marriage and mourning. UNESCO inscribed the practice on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. It is among the clearest surviving examples of hocket technique anywhere in Africa.
Gold on the BorderEconomic history
Berta country has been washed for alluvial gold for centuries, and gold is what made the sheikhdoms worth conquering: they paid tribute in it to the Funj sultanate of Sennar and then, after 1898, to Ethiopia. Artisanal gold mining remains the region's principal cash activity, employing tens of thousands seasonally, with the attendant mercury exposure and the attendant conflicts over who may dig where. Industrial concessions have been granted over ground artisanal miners work, which is the current dispute.
The Line Through the SheikhdomsPolitical history
The Berta sheikhdoms sat between the Funj and Ethiopian spheres and paid tribute in both directions. The Anglo-Ethiopian boundary agreements of 1902 and after put most of them inside Ethiopia, and the sheikhs — Khojali al-Hasan of Assosa among them — negotiated their positions with Addis Ababa. The border has since been a conduit for arms, refugees and rebellion in both directions, most recently through the Blue Nile fighting in Sudan from 2011 and the Sudanese war from 2023.
Proverbs
“One trumpet is a noise; twelve are a song.”
On the waza ensemble, and on collective work.
“Gold is found by the one who is prepared to be wet and cold.”
On the labour behind the wealth.
“The border is a line for those who drew it.”
On kinship across the frontier.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Islamic monotheism, layered over an older cosmology whose spirits are addressed in possession and healing; named hills, rivers and trees carrying prohibitions.
Beliefs: Sunni Islam with strong Sufi influence from Sudan; possession and healing ceremonies (including forms of zar); ancestral observance; the waza and its consecration standing between musical and religious practice.
Ancestors: Sheikhly genealogies are recited and are the basis of authority; the tombs of the sheikhs and of Sufi teachers are visited for blessing.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Possessing spirits
Addressed in healing ceremonies, in a complex shared with Sudan
Site powers
Presences of named hills, rivers and trees
Sufi saints
Venerated figures whose tombs are visited across the border region
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of round thatched houses within fenced compounds in the lowland woodland, with the mosque at the centre and sorghum fields around.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with conical grass thatch; raised granaries; gourd and horn trumpet making; gold-washing sluices and pans on the seasonal streams.
Village layout: Houses around a swept compound, the mosque and the market at the village centre, fields beyond, and the washing sites along the streams.
Artifacts
Waza trumpets
Instrument
Gourd-and-horn trumpets played one note each in an interlocking ensemble, UNESCO-inscribed in 2009.
Gold-washing sluices
Craft
Wooden sluices and pans used on the seasonal streams of the borderland.
Sheikhly tombs
Heritage site
Burial sites of the Berta sheikhs and Sufi teachers, visited for blessing.
Sorghum granaries
Craft
Raised and sealed stores against the long dry season.
Historical Timeline
1500s–1800s
Berta sheikhdoms pay tribute to the Funj sultanate of Sennar and trade gold northward.
1898–1902
Ethiopian expansion and the Anglo-Ethiopian boundary agreements place the sheikhdoms inside Ethiopia.
1900s–1970s
The sheikhs govern under Ethiopian suzerainty; gold and sesame remain the region's exports.
1991–2009
Benishangul-Gumuz Region is created; the waza is inscribed by UNESCO in 2009.
2011–present
Blue Nile fighting in Sudan and the Sudanese war from 2023 bring refugees and instability to the border.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO — Music and dance of the Berta people (Waza)UNESCO
- Ethiopian Statistics Service — census reportsGovernment of Ethiopia
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: BertaSIL International