Standing in the centre of Jimma, the Coffee Pot Monument is the city's most recognisable symbol — a large sculptural coffee jebena (the traditional clay pot used in the Ethiopian coffee ceremony) that announces Jimma's claim to be the birthplace of coffee. It is the first thing most visitors photograph and the natural meeting point in town.
The monument's significance is not merely decorative. Jimma sits at the edge of the Kaffa highlands, from which the word "coffee" is thought to derive, and the surrounding forests still contain wild Coffea arabica trees that represent some of the most genetically diverse coffee in the world. The cup of coffee you drink anywhere on earth traces its lineage to this part of southwestern Ethiopia. That the city marks itself with a coffee pot rather than a political monument says something about where its pride lies.