An early settler at Moyale was a Greek by the name of Zaphiro, who had a station which he had named "Fort Harrington". When C.W. Gwynn visited in 1908, Zaphiro's station consisted of a garden that covered several acres and his house, located on a spur projecting from the Boran highlands, and providing access through the line of cliffs that run along the border. "This route may well become some day a considerable trade artery," Gwynn predicted. "Fort Harrington is therefore well placed as a healthy administrative post and as a possible commercial centre." During World War II, both parts of the town were captured by Italians from Ethiopia in 1940, and retaken by the British on 15 July 1941. Tensions rose in the Kenyan side of Moyale in early 1999, after an Imam was shot dead during an Ethiopian raid across the Ethiopian-Kenyan border in pursuit of rebels of the Oromo Liberation Front. The Kenyan residents of the town, held demonstrations condemning the action, which they attributed to Ethiopian security men who believed he was a sympathizer of the OLF. In March 2018, nine civilians were killed by the Ethiopian National Defense Force near Moyale after being misidentified as Oromo Liberation Front militants. In November 2009, Ethiopian Prime MinisterMeles Zenawi announced plans to extend the Ethiopian railroad to Moyale. This would facilitate Kenyan plans, which at the time were at an advanced stage, to develop the port of Lamu and connect it to the Kenyan side of Moyale with a tarmac road. This business town is disputed between the two dominant ethnic groups who are Oromos and Somalis. Moyale saw four days of ethnic clashes in July 2012 over a long-standing land dispute between Borana and Garre communities, exacerbated by drought conditions. The fighting left at least eighteen dead, and more than twenty thousand people fled across the border into Kenya.
Demographics
For the Ethiopian share of Moyale, based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, it has an estimated total population of 25,038 of whom 13,665 are men and 11,373 are women. The 1994 Ethiopian census reported that the Ethiopian side of Moyale had a total population of 13,962, of whom 7,411 were men and 6,551 were women. The five largest ethnic groups reported in Moyale were the Somalis, Borana Oromo, the Burji, the Amhara, the Welayta, and the Silt'e.
Language
Somali was spoken as a first language by 54% of the population, second 30% spoke the Oromo language], 5% spoke Amharic, 7% spoke Burji, 2% spoke Welayta, and another 2% spoke Silt'e. The Kenyan part of Moyale has an urban population of 9,276.
