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Dembidolo (or Dembi Dolo; formerly Sayo) is a market town in southwestern Ethiopia. Located in the Mirab Welega Zone of the Oromia Region (or kilil), this town has a longitude and latitude of 8°32′N, 34°48′E.

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, this town has an estimated total population of 35,065, of whom 18,129 were males and 16,936 were females.^[1] According to the 1994 national census, it had a population of 19,587.

Dembidolo is known for goldsmith work and for tej production. The town also possesses an airport (ICAO code HADD, IATA DEM).

Originally known as Sayo, after the semi-autonomous kingdom that had ruled in this area in the years after 1900, by 1920 this town served as the seat of the governors of this part of southwestern Ethiopia up to the Italian conquest.^[2]

In the days immediately following the collapse of the Derg and the flight of president Mengistu Haile Mariam from the country in May 1991, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) came to administer civilian control of Dembidolo and its surrounding territory. However, when the OLF found that their efforts to field candidates in the rest of the Oromia region were frustrated by the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization, with the support of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, the OLF withdrew from the government in 1992. This proved to be a disaster for the OLF, as EPRDF forces captured Dembidolo and forcibly drove the OLF membership into exile.^[3]

1. ^ CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.4
2. ^ Donald Donham includes Sayo as one of the "strictly limited" number of local domains that were permitted a degree of independence in return for accepting the rule of Emperor Menelik II. Dunham, "The making of an imperial state" in The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia, Donald Dunham and Wendy James, editors (Oxford: James Currey, 2002) p. 37
3. ^ Human Rights' Watch website