Holeta

Holeta is a highland town in Oromia, not far west of Addis Ababa, that grew up around the construction of the Addis Ababa–Addis Alem road, when houses from the older settlement were dismantled and moved to the new site. Emperor Menelik II and Empress Taytu Betul used it as a country retreat, and the town's population would swell from a few thousand to tens of thousands when the imperial couple was in residence. Holeta was also the site of Ethiopia's first permanent water mill, built on the Holetta River in 1909. It is best known today as home to the Holeta Military Academy, opened in January 1935 with Swedish officers on staff, and to a major research station of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (founded 1963), which works on barley, highland oil crops, potatoes, and dairy.