Gonga

The Gonga are Omotic-speaking peoples of forested southwestern Ethiopian highlands around Bonga; their Gonga or Kefoid tongues were once spoken in the medieval kingdoms of Damot and Ennarea and survive among the Kaffa. In the thirteenth century their strongest state was Damot, south of the Blue Nile, whose motalami kings were powerful enough to exact tribute from the Muslim sultanate of Shewa.

The Christian emperor Amda Seyon conquered Damot in 1316 and made it tributary; in 1337 the Gonga lands lay on the empire's southwestern edge, valued for gold. Ennarea broke from Damot later in the fourteenth century to lead the non-Muslim south; the imperial court converted its elite to Christianity in the 1580s.

From the later sixteenth century Macha Oromo expansion overwhelmed Gibe; when Ennarea fell around 1710 its royal clan fled to Kaffa, and surviving Gonga scattered or were absorbed.