According to the Dutch explorer Juan Maria Schuver, who visited the town in 1881, Asosa was "a prosperous village as several slave-merchants live here" who travelled to Leqa Naqamte and to the Kwama people to purchase slaves.

[2] During the Ethiopian Civil War, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) captured Asosa from the Derg in early January 1990, and held the city for a brief time.

[3] Before the Derg withdrew from Asosa, it destroyed the town's only electricity generator, stole 1.8 million Birr from the bank, most of which were deposits from the local farmer cooperatives, and took any valuable items its troops could carry.

[4] During the 1990s, Asosa was characterised by entire government office complexes of partially completed buildings, which John Young notes was "testimony to corrupt relations between politicians and contractors."

Young continues, "Indicative of the scale of the problem, during a peace and development conference held in Asosa in June 1996, the then deputy prime minister, Tamrat Layne, dismissed the entire regional government and had many of its members imprisoned for corruption.