Lay Gayint
woreda in Amhara Region, Debub Gondar
Lay Gayint (Amharic: ላይ ጋይንት, lit. 'Upper Gayint') is a woreda in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Debub Gondar Zone, Lay Gayint is bordered on the south by Tach Gayint and Simada, on the southwest by Misraq Este, on the west by Farta, on the north by Ebenat, and on the east by the Semien Wollo Zone. The administrative center is Nefas Mewcha; other towns in Lay Guyint include Gobgob and Sali.
The altitude of this woreda varies from 1,500 to 3,100 metres (4,900 to 10,200 ft) above sea level. The annual rainfall is erratically distributed and varies from 400 to 1,100 millimetres (16 to 43 in). A notable landmark in Lay Guyint is the church of the village of Betlehem, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) southeast of Debre Tabor; inside an ordinary round church structure is an ancient church with a trussed roof of identical construction as the church of Debre Damo. The writer Thomas Pakenham was the first non-Ethiopian to visit this church in 1955.
Notable figures
Notable figures from this small town include Ambachew Mekonnen who served as the President of the Amhara regional state up until his murder during an attempted coup.
Demographics
A 2012 estimate puts the population at 225,830. This gives a population density of 148.34 people per square kilometer (384.19 people per square mile), given its area of 1,522.43 square kilometers (587.81 square miles), lower than the South Gondar Zone average of 158.85 people per square kilometer (411.43 people per square mile).
“Lay Gayint” enters the record as woreda in Amhara Region, Debub Gondar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gayint, woreda and Amhara can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3219956. Authority coordinates are 12.000, 38.333. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lay Gayint” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.