New Somali Regional Census puts the population at 2.5 million

[Garaad Awal]

Awbarre is mostly rural; the last census showed a population of 500,000, with most of the SR being rural, aside from the major towns.

Ethiopia census will always try to downsize the population, it was estimated to be around 7.5m, local government has 25m on its website, the real population is somewhere in between.

K5 rural areas besides Fafaan is nomadic and very sparse. Fafaan follows the typical Ethio trend of low urbanization. Amhara & Oromo regions also have rural areas teeming people with tiny urban centers like Gonder or Adama.

It is clear K5 is roughly 3.5-4 million people

 

[Idilinaa]

K5 rural areas besides Fafaan is nomadic and very sparse. Fafaan follows the typical Ethio trend of low urbanization. Amhara & Oromo regions also have rural areas teeming people with tiny urban centers like Gonder or Adama.

It is clear K5 is roughly 3.5-4 million people

Besides Fafan, the zones with the highest population density are Shabelle, Liban, and Afder they are farming areas as well.

The rest of the Somali Region is more sparsely populated, with their own local urban centers. In most rural areas, people live in small villages rather than isolated homesteads so when people say 'rural,' they’re often referring to these village settings.

Fafan Zone has the highest level of urbanization. Aside from Jigjiga, it includes towns like Awbare, Dharwanaaje, Lefe Isa, Babile, Qabri Bayax, Harshin, Goljano, Tuli Gulled, and Hart Sheik.

Outside Fafan, two of the largest urban centers are:

Fiiq in Nogob Zone



Qabri Dahare in Korahare Zone


These towns serve as key regional hubs for commerce, administration, and population concentration outside the Jigjiga-Fafan core.

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

You can roughly estimate the population of the Somali Region by looking at NFD and Somalia. Population density in NFD and Somalia was somewhere between 20-25 per sq km in 2019. The Somali Region is 357,000 sq km, or 56% the size of Somalia. Take a density of 22.5 per sq km for the Somali Region and you have a population of 8 million in 2019. Assuming a population growth rate of 3% gives you a population of 9.5 million in the Somali Region in 2025.

If 2.5 million of those 9.5 are urban, that means that the Somali Region is 26% urban. This seems much more in line with what I know of the region than it being 14% urban.

ps. it is impossible for the Somali region to have a population of 4 million. The ESS (which assumes that the Somali % of Ethiopia's population has not gone up since 2007 lol) estimates the Somali Region's population at 7 million.
https://ess.gov.et/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Projected_Population-2024.pdf