Awash

River that rises to the south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and flows northeast to Lake Abba on the frontier with Djibouti, ending in a chain of salt lakes; length 800 km/500 mi. Cotton is grown along the river valley and the Koka Dam (1960) supplies hydroelectric power. Although deep inside present-day Ethiopia, the Awash River was considered by Somalis to mark the eastern limit of Ethiopian sovereignty prior to the colonial division of Somaliland in the 19th century.