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Hawassa, 
Ethiopia
444,909 people lived in Hawassa in 2025. It is the 1250th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 6th largest in Ethiopia.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Hawassa grew
Where Hawassa had 10 people in 1975, it had 49.2 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 653,938 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2000 and 2005.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Hawassa through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Hawassa in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Ethiopia · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Ethiopia and its 259 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Addis Ababa). Hawassa is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Hawassa covered 62 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 13 km² of it. That is 30 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 7.3 times its size, and its people are 4.9 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Ethiopia
Its share of Ethiopia
Of every 1,000 people in Ethiopia in 2025, 3 lived in Hawassa, which is 444,909 people.
How to read this: shrink Ethiopia to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Hawassa; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 1246 Parbhani India446,508
- 1247 Pematang Siantar Indonesia446,269
- 1248 Ogbomosho Nigeria445,090
- 1249 Chengde China444,971
- 1250 Hawassa444,909
- 1251 Tangail Bangladesh444,219
- 1252 Chaoyang China443,864
- 1253 Bologna Italy443,849
- 1254 Abéché Chad443,793
In Ethiopia, 2025
- 937 Adama584,854
- 1107 Bahir Dar498,735
- 1146 Dire Dawa483,674
- 1230 Shashamane452,945
- 1250 Hawassa444,909
- 1257 Bishoftu442,776
- 1327 Jijiga422,225
- 1448 Gonder392,767
- 1583 Dilla360,925
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Hawassa are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Hawassa publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries