According to the 2007 Ethiopian national census, this ethnic group has 986,977 members, of whom 75.05% live in the SNNPR and 24.84% in adjacent parts of the Oromia Region.
[2] Asebe Regassa Debelo provides oral traditions showing that the Gedeo acquired the practice from the Guji Oromo, with whom they have had, historically, a close relationship.
[3] On the other hand, their agricultural economy is based on cultivating ensete, as is their neighbors the Sidama people, whose language is closely related to theirs.
Tadesse Kippie Kanshie mentions one story in which the Gedeo trace their origin to the aboriginal tribe called Murgga-Gosallo, perhaps the earliest people to have lived in the area.
[7] Daraso is said to have had seven sons from two wives, from whom were descended the seven Gedeo clans: Doobba’a, Darashsha, Gorggorshsha, Hanuma, Bakarro, Henbba’a and Logoda.
[5] However, one authority holds that the greatest administrative action that changed the lives of the Gedeo was during the 1920s when measurement of land through qallad (a rope or leather thong about 66–67 meters long) was introduced.
This migration led to assimilation of different clans, eliminated traditional no-man's zones and encouraged clearing of forested areas for the purposes of growing mixed coffee and ensete.
The missionaries found their evangelical work quite easy, for they had only to substitute the Christian God for the Mageno, the Supreme Being of the Gedeo.
Gedeo were so eager to learn how to read and write, that elementary schools had to offer evening classes for the adults, lit by kerosene lamps.
"[5] The landlords, well aware of the consequences, were vehemently opposed to any education of the Gedeo, and worked against the efforts of the missionaries, by limiting their movement in the countryside in various ways.
Some, such as Murtti Obese, one of the first converts to evangelize to the Gedeo south of Dila, lost his life in 1970 while in the remote areas of Hagere Mariam woreda, and Tesfaye Argaw was murdered while on a similar mission in the lowlands.
In the 1950s, Gedeo elders were selected and presented a petition to Emperor Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa, but to no avail.
[5] Besides the baalle system, before their conquest by the Ethiopian Empire in the 1890s, the Gedeo lived in a federation of three territories called Sasserogo, or "three Roga".