Ras Desta Damtew KBE (Amharic: ደስታ ዳምጠው; c. 1892 – 24 February 1937) was an Ethiopian noble, army commander and a son-in-law of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

[2] Anthony Mockler describes Desta Damtew as "something of an eccentric among Ethiopian nobles", who had run away in his twenties to become a monk at Debre Libanos, as well as having a reputation "as an entrepreneur and an enfant terrible."

Mockler continues that Ras Desta "had as little taste as the young progressives of inferior birth for the traditional amusements of the Amhara aristocracy, the feasting, the horsemanship, the boasting and the drunkenness.

In 1933, Ras Desta Damtew traveled to America to return the visit of the United States representative to the coronation of Haile Selassie.

Desta retreated back to his administrative center at Irgalem, where with the help of Dejazmach Gabremariam he reorganized his surviving supporters to resist the Italian advance.

It was not until a month later when a second Italian column advanced from the south through the Wadara Forest that Ras Desta at last left Irgalem, which was occupied 1 December.

Wounded, Ras Desta managed to escape, only to be caught and executed on 24 February 1937 near his birthplace by Tigrayan banda, under the command of Italian officers.

[14] In 2024 it emerged that Demtwe's Imperial Order of the Star of Ethiopia medal had been stolen by an Italian soldier around the time of his execution and was being offered for sale by auction by a British collector living in Spain.