Benishangul-Gumuz (Amharic: በኒሸንጉል ጉሙዝ, romanized: Benšangul Gumuz) is a regional state in northwestern Ethiopia bordering Sudan.

The region has faced major challenges to economic development, due to lack of transportation and communications infrastructure.

[12] Like the Gambela Region, Benishangul-Gumuz is historically closely linked to neighbouring areas of Sudan, and to a lesser extent to the Ethiopian Highlands.

These regions served as slave-hunting grounds since Aksumite times, and their Nilosaharan-speaking inhabitants were pejoratively called Shanqella (Šanqəlla, also Shanqila, Shankella) by the highland Ethiopians.

Finds attributing them to the Berta date from the 17th to 20th centuries and are mainly located on mountains, hills and in rocky areas that are easy to defend.

Various trade routes met in Benishangul, and local gold and Ethiopian amole (salt bars) were exchanged for slaves, cattle, horses, iron, civet, musk, coffee, ivory and honey (which also came from the Oromo areas of Sibu and Leeqaa).

[13] In the late 19th century, Ethiopia, under Menelik II, annexed the Sultanates of Beni Shangul and Gubba (Qubba in Arabic) at the behest of Abdallahi ibn Muhammad of Sudan who feared the British would occupy it.

[19] Until the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in the mid-1930s, the area supplied gold and slaves to the central government on a large scale.

[14] Under the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who ruled Ethiopia from 1974, some 250,000 drought and famine-stricken peasants from the highlands—mostly Amharas from Wollo province—were relocated to Benishangul-Gumuz from 1979 and especially in the mid-1980s.

The Berta rebels instead allied with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which overthrew the Mengistu regime in 1991 with the coalition EPRDF.

However, due to increased population which has led to the widespread destruction of the canopy, authorities announced a campaign on 8 June 2007 to plant 1.5 million seedlings over the next two months to replenish this resource.

[23] (This list is based on information from Worldstatesmen.org, John Young,[24] and the Ethiopian News Agency website[25]) Like other regions in Ethiopia, Benishangul-Gumuz is subdivided into administrative zones.