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ADDIS ABABA, Feb. 18--DISPLAYING AND DETAINING--Army veterans display banners in favor of the Military Administrative Provisional Council and its policy in Addis Ababa Tuesday as Ethiopian troops stand on jeep in background to guard main entrance of Grand Palace where former Emperor Haile Selassie is detained. (AP Wirephoto)(pr31433stf-fornezza) 1975

Front (Handwritten):

Ethiopia

Back (Stamped Text):

This picture is the property of Wide World Photos, Inc. and may be used only for purposes of one time reproduction in the U.S.A. when authorized by the owner. It is not to be used outside continental United States without permission of Wide World Photos. It may not be used in such manner as to violate the rights of any person, firm or corporation. It may not be used for advertising or purposes of trade unless written consent of each living person depicted, or if a minor, of his or her parent or guardian, shall be obtained, such consent to run to the owners and the licensee. If any use shall violate, or shall be claimed to violate, the rights of any person, firm or corporation, the licensee agrees to save harmless the owner from all liability, including reasonable counsel fees and expenses, which the owner may incur by reason thereof.
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WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

Historical Background & Biography

Haile Selassie I: The final Emperor of Ethiopia, Selassie reigned from 1930 to 1974. A defining figure in modern African history, he was a staunch advocate for pan-Africanism and led Ethiopia's resistance against the Italian invasion in the 1930s.
The Derg (Military Administrative Provisional Council): Following a period of civil unrest and famine, a military junta known as the Derg deposed Selassie in September 1974. This photo captures the tense atmosphere in February 1975, as the military solidified its control while keeping the former Emperor under house arrest at the Grand Palace.
The Setting: The Grand Palace (Jubilee Palace) in Addis Ababa served as the primary residence for the Emperor. Following the coup, it became a site of detention and a symbol of the transition from monarchy to a socialist military state.

eBay Item Description

Authentic 1975 Associated Press (AP) Wire Photo

This original 8x10-inch press photograph captures a pivotal moment in Ethiopian history following the 1974 revolution. The image depicts military veterans and troops outside the Grand Palace in Addis Ababa, where Emperor Haile Selassie was being held following his removal from power.

Subject: Military veterans supporting the Military Administrative Provisional Council (Derg) during the detention of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Date: February 18, 1975.
Source: Original AP Wirephoto / Wide World Photos.
Size: Approximately 8 x 10 inches.
Condition: Good vintage condition with an original typed caption on the front and a "Wide World Photos" stamp on the reverse.

Keywords: Ethiopia History, African Royalty, Rastafarian Interest, Military Coup, Derg, 1970s Press Photo, Photojournalism, Addis Ababa, Collectible Photography.

_______________________

Addis Ababa (/ˌædɪs ˈæbəbə/ ⓘ AD-iss AB-ə-bə;[6] Amharic: አዲስ አበባ [adˈdis ˈaβəβa] ⓘ, lit. 'new flower'; Oromo: Finfinnee, lit. 'fountain of hot mineral water') is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia.[7][8][9] With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census,[10] it is the largest city in the country and the eleventh-largest in Africa. At an elevation of 2,355 metres (7,726 ft), it is the fourth highest capital city in the world and the highest capital in Africa. Addis Ababa is a highly developed and important cultural, artistic, financial and administrative center of Ethiopia.[11]

The founding history of Addis Ababa dates back to the late 19th century by Menelik II, Negus of Shewa, in 1886 after finding Mount Entoto unpleasant two years prior.[12] At the time, the city was a resort town; its large mineral spring abundance attracted nobilities of the empire and led them to establish permanent settlement. It also attracted many members of the working classes – including artisans and merchants – and foreign visitors. Menelik II then formed his imperial palace in 1887.[13][14] Addis Ababa became the empire's capital in 1889, and subsequently international embassies were opened.[15][16] Urban development began with the 20th century, without any prior planning.[12]

Addis Ababa saw a wide-scale economic boom in 1926 and 1927, and an increase in the number of buildings owned by the middle class, including stone houses filled with imported European furniture. The middle class also imported newly manufactured automobiles and expanded banking institutions.[15] During the Italian occupation, urbanization and modernization steadily increased through a masterplan; it was hoped Addis Ababa would be a more "colonial" city and continued on after the occupation. Subsequent master plans were designed by French and British consultants from the 1940s onwards, focusing on monuments, civic structures, satellite cities and the inner-city. Similarly, the later Italo-Ethiopian masterplan (also projected in 1986) concerned only urban structure and accommodation services, but was later adapted by the 2003 masterplan.

Addis Ababa is a federally-chartered city in accordance with the Addis Ababa City Government Charter Proclamation No. 87/1997 in the FDRE Constitution.[17] Called "the political capital of Africa" due to its historical, diplomatic, and political significance for the continent, Addis Ababa serves as the headquarters of major international organizations, such as the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.[18]

The city lies a few kilometres west of the East African Rift, which splits Ethiopia into two, between the Nubian plate and the Somali plate.[19] The city is surrounded by the Special Zone of Oromia, and is populated by people from different regions of Ethiopia. It is home to Addis Ababa University. The city has a high human development index, and is known for its vibrant culture, strong fashion scene, high civic and political involvement of younger people, a thriving arts scene, and for being the heart of a country with one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world.[20]

History

Main article: History of Addis Ababa

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Addis Ababa.

Prehistory

A study based on DNA evidence from almost 1,000 people around the world suggests that early humans first traveled out of Africa via a place close to Addis Ababa, spreading from the region to the rest of the planet some time around 100,000 years ago.[21] The research indicated that genetic diversity decreases steadily the further one's ancestors travelled from Addis Ababa.[22]

Middle Ages

Mount Entoto, a high tableland to the north of current Addis Ababa, is one of a handful of sites put forward as a possible location for a medieval imperial capital known as Barara. This permanent fortified city was established during the early to mid-15th century and it served as the main residence of several successive emperors up to the early 16th-century reign of Libne Dengel.[23] The city was depicted standing between Mount Zuqualla and Menegasha on a map drawn by the Italian cartographer Fra Mauro in around 1450, and it was razed and plundered by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim while the imperial army was trapped on the south of the Awash River in 1529, an event witnessed and documented two years later by the Yemeni writer Arab-Faqih. The suggestion that Barara was located on Mount Entoto is supported by the very recent discovery of a large medieval town overlooking Addis Ababa located between rock-hewn Washa Mikael and the more modern church of Entoto Maryam, founded in the late 19th century. Dubbed the Pentagon, the 30-hectare site incorporates a castle with 12 towers, along with 520 meters of stone walls measuring up to 5-meter high.[23] Described a "metropolis", Barara is estimated to have a population exceeding 160,000 people,[24] comparable to the largest European towns in 1500 CE, Paris and Naples.[25]

Foundation

Main article: Urban evolution of Addis Ababa

Distant view of Menelik Palace in 1900

Founding

In 1886, settlement began in the valley south of the mountain in a place called Finfinne, a name which refers to the presence of hot springs. The site was chosen by Empress Taytu Betul. Initially, she built a house for herself near the "Filwuha" hot mineral springs, where she and members of the Shewan Royal Court liked to take mineral baths. Empress Taytu persuaded Emperor Menelik II to move the capital from cold and windy Entoto to the plains below and named the new city Addis Ababa. By the next year large plots of land (Amharic: ሰፈር , sefer) had been allocated to the major nobility, other important personages and some churches. The local Oromo tribes had their lands confiscated and many were displaced. The city was originally founded as a katama (royal camp), with the sefer laid out mirroring an army on the march. The lands of Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis were furthest to the west, while the Imperial Palace of Menelik was in the centre, bracketed on each side by the leaders of the left (Qeñazmach) and right (Grazmach) wings of the army. The rear or area to the east of the palace was allocated to a Dejazmach or another prominent noble. Many of these original lands can still be traced back to the original military grants. Each sefer continued to be settled by each noble's retainers and slaves, usually brought from the lands he controlled. Among those ethnic groups, the Amhara, the Oromo, the Gurage, the Dorze and the Tigrayans would come in the largest numbers.[26] The town grew by leaps and bounds. Not only for nobles, but also the site attracted numerous working classes including artisans, merchants, and foreign visitors.

The earliest urban dwelling typically made up of hut cluster. Here is an example of British legation pictured in 1910.

Early residential dwelling was typically made of circular huts; walls were constructed with mud (Amharic: ጭቃ, cheka) and straw plastered on a wooden frame and thatched roofs. Addis Ababa's growth rate began with early rapid urbanization without preplanned intention. This was the time where nobilities embarked on concentrated permanent settlement, and altered by social patterns; i.e. each neighborhoods (sefer) was located on higher grounds, noncontiguous from adjacent settlements. The early social milieu contributed the contemporary admixture of a classic neighborhood. One of Emperor Menelik's contributions that are still visible today is the planting of numerous eucalyptus trees along the city streets.[27][12]

The Te'eka Negist Mausoleum at Menelik Palace in Addis Ababa, 1934.

Moreover, the city held strong social organization patterns prior to the Italian invasion. According to Richard Pankhurst (1968), the city's accelerated population growth was due to factors of provisional governors and their troops, the 1892 famine, and eventually the Battle of Adwa. Another includes the 1907 land act, municipal administration in 1909, and a railway and modernized transportation system boom beginning in the 20th century, culminating in continual growth. Additional supplements, for example the laying of Ethio-Djibouti Railways and topographical factors further led the city's boundary to expand southward.[12]

20th century

Pre-Italian occupation (1916–1935)

Addis Ababa in aerial view (1934)

Gebrehiwot Baykedagn took major administrative division post, and Addis Ababa–Djibouti railways in 1916,[28] which also connects Addis Ababa with French Somaliland port of Djibouti.[29] Ras Tafari Mekonnen, later became Emperor Haile Selassie I was the most powerful figure in the city following his appointment in 1917. He transformed the city by recognizing the importance of modernization and urbanization, and he distributed wealth to support emerging class. From this point, Ras Tafari gained a legitimate power as regency council in 1918.

Marketplace in Addis Ababa (c. February 1934)

By 1926 and 1927, a large-scale economic revolution occurred, a surplus of coffee production began growing as a result of capital accumulation. Profiting from this wealth, the bourgeoisie benefited the city by constructing new, stone-fitted houses with imported European furniture and an importation of the latest automobiles, and expansion of banks across the locales. The total register of automobiles were 76 in 1926 and went to 578 in 1930. The first popular road transportation opened between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, about 156 km (97 mi) northward in the direction of Dessie. Initially intended to connect Italian occupied Assab with Addis Ababa in the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928, the road was considered for motor vehicle travel. The highway was important to the French railway of Djibouti and freight rate was very high with a lack of competition, and increase of cargo between Ethiopia and Assab.[30]

In 1930, the Emperor was crowned and proceeded with new technologies and building infrastructure. Among them, he installed power lines and telephones, and erected several monuments (such as Meyazia 27 Square).

Italian occupation (1936–1941)

Military parade of Italian troops in Addis Ababa (1936)

Following all the major engagements of their invasion, the Italian troops from the colony of Eritrea entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936. Along with Dire Dawa, the city had been spared the aerial bombardment (including the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas) practiced elsewhere in Ethiopia. This also allowed its railway to Djibouti to remain intact. After the occupation, the city served as the Duke of Aosta's capital for unified Italian East Africa until 1941, when it was abandoned in favor of Amba Alagi and other redoubts during the Second World War's East African Campaign. According to Soviet estimates, 15,000 Ethiopians casualties were victims of chemical weapons, especially by sulfur mustard.[31]

The Italian ambition regarding Addis Ababa was to create a beautified colonial capital city along with a new master plan launched by seven architects such as Marcello Piacentini, Alessandro Bianchi, Enrico Del Debbio, Giuseppe Vaccaro, Le Corbusier, Ignazio Guidi and Cesare Valle. Despite contradictory and different ideas for each other, the plan was intended to focus on the general architectural plan of the city. Two preparations were approved from the master plan: the Le Corbusier and Guidi and Valle. During an invitation to Mussolini, the French Swiss architect Le Corbusier illustrated the master plan in a guideline sketch involving a traversing route monumental structure by a grand boulevard across the city from north to south, as he extracted from his 1930–1933 Radiant City concept. His two counterparts, Guildi and Valle prepared the master plan in summer 1936 likely emphasizing fascist ideology with monumental structure and no native Ethiopian participation in designing sector. Two parallel axis were drawn in European character connecting Arada/Giyorgis with the railway station to the south end five kilometers long and varied width spanning from 40 to 90 meters.[32]

On 5 May 1941, the city was liberated by Major Orde Wingate and Emperor Haile Selassie for Ethiopian Gideon Force and Ethiopian resistance in time to permit Emperor Haile Selassie's return on 5 May 1941, five years to the day after he had left.

Post-Italian occupation (1941–1974)

In the aftermath, Addis Ababa suffered from economic stagnation and rapid population growth, the inner-city affected by urban morphology initiated by Italian occupation and the peripheral area were in urban sprawl. In 1946, Haile Selassie invited famous British master planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie with goals of modelling and beautifying the city to become the capital for Africa. By this organizing model, Abercrombie launched the master plan with neighborhood units surrounded by green parkways, and he was encouraged to draw ring roads characterized by radial shapes to channel traffic pathway from the central area.[32]

His careful master plan of a major traffic route was completed by segregating neighborhood units, as he extracted from his 1943 London traffic problem. In 1959, the British consultant team named Bolton Hennessy and Partners commissioned an improvement of Abercrombie's 1954–1956 satellite towns. From the place, they did not incorporated outer area like Mekenissa and West of the old Air Port in the proposal, while Rapi, Gefersa, Kaliti and Kotebe proposed as outlet of Jimma, Ambo and Dessie respectively (the four regional highways). The Hennessy and Partners illustration would be physically larger to current size of Addis Ababa with surrounded satellite towns. In 1965, the French Mission for Urban Studies and Habitat led by Luis De Marien launched another master plan responsible to create monumental axis through Addis Ababa City Hall with an extension across Gofa Mazoria in the southern part of the city. Marien's difference to the previous Italian master plan was the use of single monumental axis while they used the double one.[32]

Haile Selassie also helped to form the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, which was later dissolved in 2002 and replaced by the African Union (AU), which is also headquartered in the city, airports and industrial parks. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa founded in 1958, also has its headquarters in Addis Ababa. Addis Ababa was also the site of the Council of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in 1965. Pankhurst (1962) noted in a survey of total land of 212 square kilometers, 58% owned by 1,768, owing to 10,000 square meters, and 12% were given to church whereas other small areas were still acquired in the name of posthumous nobilities such as Dejazemach Wube Haile Mariam, Fitawrari Aba Koran, and a bridge named "Fitawrari Habtegiorgis" after Habte Giyorgis Dinagde.[33] According to the 1965 master plan, the city covered an area of 21,000 hectares and would increase to 51,000 hectares by 1984 master plan.[32]

Churchill Road in 1960

In 1965, the first student march took place in response to the feudal imperial government of Haile Selassie, in which they chanted "Land for the Tiller", culminating in a Marxist–Leninist movement in Ethiopia. In addition, the 1973 oil crisis heavily impacted the city. 1,500 peasants in Addis Ababa marched to plead for food to be returned by police, and intellectual from Addis Ababa University forced the government to take a measure against the spreading famine, a report which Haile Selassie government denounced as "fabrication". Haile Selassie responded later "rich and poor have always existed and will, Why? Because there are those that work...and those that prefer to do nothing...Each individual is responsible for his misfortunes, his fate." Students around the city gathered to protest in February 1974; eventually Haile Selassie was successfully deposed from office in 1974 by a group of police officers. Later, the group named themselves Derg, officially "Provisional Military Administrative Council" (PMAC).[34] The city had only 10 woredas.[32]

Marketplace on 3 October 1973

The Derg administration (1974–1991)

After the Derg came to power, roughly two-third of housing stock transferred to rental housing. The population growth declined from 6.5% to 3.7%. In 1975, the Derg nationalized "extra" rental structures built by private stockholders. As a result, the Proclamationon No. 47/1975 issued weakened buildings with small amount of living was administered by kebele units, while rental houses with large quality fell under Agency for Rental Housing Administration (ARHA). If those rental properties value less than 100 birr (US$48.31), they would be put under kebele administration.[12] The administrative divisions showed an increase of woredas to 25 and 284 kebeles.[32]

Hungarian architect C.K. Polonyi was the first person to embark the city's master plan during the Derg period with assistance of the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing. He used two formula concentrating an integration Addis Ababa with suburbs of rural areas and developing inner-city. Polonyi also worked to redesign Meskel Square, which was renamed Abiyot Square by the time, implemented immediately after the name change.[32]

In 1986, the Italo-Ethiopian master plan was set up by 45 Ethiopian professional along with 75 Italian experts with 207 sectorial reports documented as references. The plan dealt with a balanced urban system and services in urban area such as water supply. Akaki incorporated to Addis Ababa to supply industrial and freight terminal services. The bureaucratic rule of the Derg postponed the master plan for eight years until 1994, which caused failure of basic issues in public service and unplanned development.[32]

Federal Democratic Republic (since 1991)

On 28 May 1991, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition party in course of overthrowing the Derg, seized Addis Ababa. They entered Menelik II Avenue and ordered a curfew for 24 hours. According to a witness, residents of Addis Ababa were ignorant and not terrified by the event, as the military told them everything was safe. The military went to central locations of the city (such as Hilton Hotel) and displayed banners "Peace, Solidarity, Friendship". At 5:30 am, they took control of the presidential palace and large-scale tanks were seen entering the area.[35]

Tank in street of Addis Ababa shortly after the seizure of Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) from the Derg in 1991

A new constitution was adapted in 1994 and enacted a year later; while all cities in Ethiopia accountable rule by regional authority, Addis Ababa (Proclamation No 87/1997) and Dire Dawa (Proclamation No 416/2004) remained chartered cities, with mandates for self-governing and developmental centers.[36] The Proclamation No. 112/1995 legitimized privatization of many government buildings, with a few exceptions, and the kebele buildings remained in tenure. The kebele dwelling and their largely unplanned settings continued to incorporated core areas of Addis Ababa[clarification needed].[12]

21st century

Addis Ababa landscape taken on 27 August 2009

From the end of 1998, new project was launched by Addis Ababa City Administration naming Office for Revision of Addis Ababa Master Plan (ORAAMP), covering from 1999 to 2003. The plan goal was to meet the standard of market economy with favorable political system resembles the revised 1986 master plan in terms of urban area.[32]

2014 Addis Ababa Master Plan

Main article: 2014 Addis Ababa Master Plan

A controversial plan to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa, by 1.1 million hectares into the Oromia special zone in April 2014,[37][38] sparked the Oromo protests on 25 April 2014 against expansion of the boundaries of Addis Ababa. The government responded by shooting at and beating peaceful protesters.[39] This escalated to full blown strikes and street protests on 12 November 2015 by university students in Ginchi town, located 80 km southwest of Addis Ababa city, encircled by Oromia Region.[40][41][42] The controversial master plan was cancelled on 12 January 2016. By that time, 140 protesters were killed.[43][44][45]

Recent history

United Nations Population Projections estimated the population of metro area of Addis Ababa to be 5,228,000 in 2022, a 4.43% increase from 2021.[46] During Abiy Ahmed's premiership, Addis Ababa and its vicinities underwent Beautifying Sheger. This project is aimed to enhance the green coverage and beauty of the city. In 2018, Abiy initiated a project called "Riverside" planned to expand riverbanks for 56 kilometres (35 mi), from the Entoto Mountains to the Akaki River.[47][48][49][50][51] In October 2022, the government launched Sheger City, an urban development model that contains 12 sub-cities, 36 districts and 40 rural kebeles with its seat located in Saris area in Addis Ababa.[52][53] The project objective was to feed other satellite cities into Addis Ababa and contribute economic development within enclave. Several human rights groups as well as politicians criticized the process to build Sheger City due to inciting mass house demotions that belonged to non-Oromo ethnic group, regional disparity by violating the constitutional rights of Oromo people.[54]

Relation with Oromia Regional State

Main article: Oromia–Addis Ababa relations

Addis Ababa seen from the air, 2018

Thanksgiving Irreecha Festival in Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa is located in the heart of the Oromia state[55][56] and the major ecosystem services to the city provided by Oromia state.[57] The city was abandoned by the Oromo since the late 19th century due to its conquest by Menelik. Oromos were physically removed from the vicinity of the city during the Haile Selassie and Derg eras.[58] Article 49(5) of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia states:[59][60]

"The special interest of the State of Oromia in Addis Ababa, regarding the provision of social services or the utilization of natural resources and other similar matters, as well as joint administrative matters arising from the location of Addis Ababa within the State of Oromia, shall be respected. Particulars shall be determined by law."

In 2000, Oromia's capital was moved from Addis Ababa to Adama.[61] Because this move sparked considerable controversy and protests among Oromo students, the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization (OPDO), part of the ruling EPRDF coalition, on 10 June 2005, officially announced plans to move the regional capital back to Addis Ababa.[62] Due to the historical and natural connection between the city and the Oromo people, the Oromia Government has asserted its ownership of Addis Ababa.[63][64] Both the current mayor of Addis Ababa, Adanech Abebe, and the former mayor, Takele Uma Banti are from the former ruling party of Oromia.[65]

Geography

Addis Ababa seen from SPOT satellite

District map of Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa lies at an elevation of 2,355 metres (7,726 ft) and is a grassland biome, located at 9°1′48″N 38°44′24″E.[66] The city lies at the foot of Mount Entoto and forms part of the watershed for the Awash. From its lowest point, around Bole International Airport, at 2,326 metres (7,631 ft) above sea level in the southern periphery, Addis Ababa rises to over 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) in the Entoto Mountains to the north.

Subdivision

The city is divided into 10 boroughs, called subcities (Amharic: ክፍለ ከተማ, kifle ketema), and 99 wards (Amharic: ቀበሌ, kebele).[67][68] The 10 subcities are:

Nr Subcity Area (km2) Population Density Map

1 Addis Ketema[69] 7.41 271,644 36,659.1

2 Akaky Kaliti[70] 118.08 195,273 1,653.7

3 Arada[71] 9.91 225,999 23,000

4 Bole[72] 122.08 328,900 2,694.1

5 Gullele[73] 30.18 284,865 9,438.9

6 Kirkos[74] 14.62 235,441 16,104

7 Kolfe Keranio[75] 61.25 546,219 7,448.5

8 Lideta[76] 9.18 214,769 23,000

9 Nifas Silk-Lafto[77] 68.30 335,740 4,915.7

10 Yeka[78] 85.46 337,575 3950.1

*Lemi-Kura sub-city was added as the eleventh sub-city of Addis Ababa in 2020

Climate

Addis Ababa

Climate chart (explanation)

13 247

30 259

58 2511

82 2511

84 2511

138 2311

280 2111

290 2111

149 2211

27 249

7 237

█ Average max. and min. temperatures in °C

█ Precipitation totals in mm

Source: NMAE[79]

Imperial conversion

Addis Ababa has a subtropical highland climate (Köppen: Cwb) with precipitation varying considerably by the month.[80] The city has a complex mix of alpine climate zones, with temperature differences of up to 10 °C (18 °F), depending on elevation and prevailing wind patterns. The high elevation moderates temperatures year-round, and the city's position near the Equator means that temperatures are very constant from month to month. As such the climate would be maritime if its elevation was not taken into account, as no month is above 22 °C (72 °F) in mean temperatures.

Mid-November to January is a season for occasional rain. The highland climate regions are characterised by dry winters, and this is the dry season in Addis Ababa. During this season the daily maximum temperatures are usually not more than 23 °C (73 °F), And the night-time minumum temperatures will range from 5°C to 10°C and can drop to freezing. The short rainy season is from February to May. During this period, the difference between the daytime maximum temperatures and the nighttime minimum temperatures is not as great as during other times of the year, with minimum temperatures in the range of 10–15 °C (50–59 °F). At this time of the year, the city experiences warm temperatures and pleasant rainfall. The long wet season is from June to mid-September; it is the coldest time of the year. This period coincides with summer, but the temperatures are much lower than at other times of year because of the frequent rain and hail and the abundance of cloud cover and fewer hours of sunshine. This time of the year is characterised by dark, chilly and wet days and nights.[citation needed] The autumn which follows is a transitional period between the wet and dry seasons.

The highest temperature on record was 30.6 °C (87.1 °F) 26 February 2019, while the lowest temperature on record was 0 °C (32 °F), recorded on multiple occasions.[81]

Climate data for Addis Ababa (1991–2020, extremes 1898–present)

Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year

Record high °C (°F) 28.8

(83.8) 30.6

(87.1) 30.0

(86.0) 30.2

(86.4) 29.6

(85.3) 29.0

(84.2) 29.1

(84.4) 28.0

(82.4) 25.6

(78.1) 27.1

(80.8) 29.7

(85.5) 26.5

(79.7) 30.6

(87.1)

Mean daily maximum °C (°F) 23.9

(75.0) 25.3

(77.5) 25.8

(78.4) 25.4

(77.7) 25.3

(77.5) 23.6

(74.5) 21.2

(70.2) 20.9

(69.6) 21.9

(71.4) 23.3

(73.9) 23.3

(73.9) 23.1

(73.6) 23.6

(74.5)

Daily mean °C (°F) 16.3

(61.3) 17.6

(63.7) 18.6

(65.5) 18.8

(65.8) 18.8

(65.8) 17.5

(63.5) 16.5

(61.7) 16.4

(61.5) 16.6

(61.9) 16.5

(61.7) 15.9

(60.6) 15.5

(59.9) 17.1

(62.8)

Mean daily minimum °C (°F) 8.6

(47.5) 9.9

(49.8) 11.6

(52.9) 12.2

(54.0) 12.2

(54.0) 11.7

(53.1) 11.9

(53.4) 11.8

(53.2) 11.3

(52.3) 9.7

(49.5) 8.3

(46.9) 7.5

(45.5) 10.6

(51.1)

Record low °C (°F) 0.0

(32.0) 0.0

(32.0) 2.5

(36.5) 4.0

(39.2) 4.2

(39.6) 5.4

(41.7) 5.7

(42.3) 3.9

(39.0) 0.0

(32.0) 0.0

(32.0)

Average rainfall mm (inches) 13.0

(0.51) 33.7

(1.33) 66.3

(2.61) 91.2

(3.59) 76.0

(2.99) 118.9

(4.68) 238.3

(9.38) 241.8

(9.52) 132.2

(5.20) 32.2

(1.27) 5.3

(0.21) 7.5

(0.30) 1,056.4

(41.59)

Average rainy days (≥ 0.1 mm) 3 5 7 10 10 20 27 26 18 4 1 1 132

Average relative humidity (%) 52 51 53 59 55 68 78 80 75 57 53 53 62

Mean monthly sunshine hours 266.6 206.2 241.8 210.0 238.7 174.0 111.6 133.3 162.0 248.0 267.0 288.3 2,547.5

Mean daily sunshine hours 8.6 7.3 7.8 7.0 7.7 5.8 3.6 4.3 5.4 8.0 8.9 9.3 7.0

Source 1: Météo Climat[82][81]Ethiopian Meteorological Institute (rainfall)[83]

Source 2: World Meteorological Organisation (rainy days 1981–2010),[84] Deutscher Wetterdienst (humidity 1951–1990, and sun 1985–1998)[85]

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Addis Ababa

People in Addis Ababa

As of the 2007 population census conducted by the Ethiopian national statistics authorities, Addis Ababa has a total population of 2,739,551 urban and rural inhabitants. For the capital city 662,728 households were counted living in 628,984 housing units, which results in an average of 5.3 persons to a household. Although all Ethiopian ethnic groups are represented in Addis Ababa because it is the capital of the country, the largest groups include the Amhara (47.05%), Oromo (19.51%), Gurage (16.34%), Tigrayan (6.18%), Silt'e (2.94%), and Gamo (1.68%). Languages spoken as mother tongues include Amharic (70.99%), Afaan Oromo (10.72%), Gurage (8.37%), Tigrinya (3.60%), Silt'e (1.82%) and Gamo (1.03%). The religion with the most believers in Addis Ababa is Ethiopian Orthodox with 43% of the population, while 33% are Muslim, 20% Protestant, and 0.48% Catholic.[86]

Ethnic groups of Addis Ababa (2007)[87]

Amhara (47.0%)

Oromo (19.5%)

Gurage (16.3%)

Tigrayan (6.18%)

Silt'e (2.94%)

Gamo (1.68%)

Other (6.30%)

Religion in Addis Ababa (2007)[87]

Ethiopian Orthodox (74.6%)

Muslim (16.2%)

P'ent'ay (7.80%)

Catholic (0.50%)

Traditional faiths (0.10%)

Other (0.80%)

In the previous census, conducted in 1994, the city's population was reported to be 2,112,737, of whom 1,023,452 were men and 1,089,285 were women. At that time, not all of the population were urban inhabitants; only 2,084,588 or 98.7% were. For the entire administrative council there were 404,783 households in 376,568 housing units, with an average of 5.2 persons per household. The major ethnic groups included the Amhara (48.27%), Oromo (19.24%), Gurage (13.54%; 9.40% Sebat Bet, and 4.14% Sodo), Tigrayan 7.65%, Silt'e 3.98%, and foreigners from Eritrea 1.34%. Languages spoken included Amharic (72.64%), Afaan Oromo (10.01%), Gurage (6.45%), Tigrinya (5.41%), and Silt'e 2.29%. In 1994 the predominant religion was also Ethiopian Orthodox with 82.0% of the population, while 12.67% were Muslim, 3.87% Protestant, and 0.78% Catholic.[88]

Historical population

Year Pop. ±%

1984 1,412,575 —

1994 2,112,737 +49.6%

2007 2,739,551 +29.7%

2023 3,945,000 +44.0%

source:[89]

Languages

Main article: Languages of Ethiopia

Standard of living

According to the 2007 national census, 98.64% of the housing units of Addis Ababa had access to safe drinking water, while 14.9% had flush toilets, 70.7% pit toilets (both ventilated and unventilated), and 14.3% had no toilet facilities.[90] In 2014, there were 63 public toilets in the city, with plans to build more.[91] Values for other reported common indicators of the standard of living for Addis Ababa as of 2005 include the following: 0.1% of the inhabitants fall into the lowest wealth quintile; adult literacy for men is 93.6% and for women 79.95%, the highest in the nation for both sexes; and the civic infant mortality rate is 45 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, which is less than the nationwide average of 77; at least half of these deaths occurred in the infants' first month of life.[92][needs update]

Outdoor[93] and indoor air[94] and surface and groundwater urban and environmental pollution is largely unregulated in Abbis Ababa.[95] Wastewater is untreated and most is discharged into rivers.[96] At 2017 the increase in air pollution due to anthropogenic emissions[97][98] was found to have increased by around 62% since the 1970s, indicated by a 34% loss in visibility.[99] A 2021 study found annual mean PM2.5 concentrations of 10 µg/m3A, 1.7 times higher than the WHO-recommended 24-hour guideline, to which chronic respiratory disease[100] and an annual total of 502 deaths (4.44%) were attributable.[93]

The city is partially powered by water turbines at the Koka Reservoir.

Economy

Main article: Economy of Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa skyline in 2021

The economic activities in Addis Ababa are diverse. According to official statistics from the federal government, some 119,197 people in the city are engaged in trade and commerce; 113,977 in manufacturing and industry; 80,391 homemakers of a different variety; 71,186 in civil administration; 50,538 in transport and communication; 42,514 in education, health and social services; 32,685 in hotel and catering services; and 16,602 in agriculture. In addition to the residents of rural parts of Addis Ababa, the city dwellers also participate in animal husbandry and the cultivation of gardens. 677 hectares (1,670 acres) of land is irrigated annually, on which 129,880 quintals of vegetables are cultivated.[citation needed] It is a relatively clean and safe city, with the most common crimes being pickpocketing, scams and minor burglary.[101] The city has recently been in a construction boom with tall buildings rising in many places. Various luxury services have also become available and the construction of shopping malls has recently increased. According to Tia Goldenberg of IOL, area spa professionals said that some people have labelled the city, "the spa capital of Africa."[102]

The Ethiopian Airlines has its headquarters on the grounds of Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa.[103]

Unity Park zoo in Addis Ababa

Development

The city hosts the We Are the Future centre, a child care centre that provides children with a higher standard of living. The centre is managed under the direction of the mayor's office, and the international NGO Glocal Forum serves as the fundraiser and program planner and coordinator for the WAF child centre in each city. Each WAF city is linked to several peer cities and public and private partners to create a unique international coalition.

Launched in 2004, the program is the result of a strategic partnership between the Glocal Forum, the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, and Mr Hani Masri, with the support of the World Bank, UN agencies and major companies.

Tourism

Tourism is a growing industry within Addis Ababa and Ethiopia as a whole. In July 2015, the European Council on Tourism and Trade named Ethiopia the best nation for inbound tourism.[104] The COVID-19 pandemic and Tigray War caused a decrease in tourism.

Zoo

A male lion at Addis Ababa Zoo

Addis Ababa Zoo kept 15 lions in 2011. Their hair samples were used in a genetic analysis, which revealed that they were genetically diverse. It was therefore proposed to include them in a captive breeding programme.[105]

Law and government

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Government

Main article: Addis Ababa City Administration

See also: Aethiopia

Tradition holds that the name Ethiopia (ኢትዮጵያ) comes from the name of the first King of Ethiopia, Ethiop, or Ethiopis.

Ayele Berkerie explains:

According to an Ethiopian tradition, the term Ethiopia is derived from the word Ethiopis, a name of the Ethiopian king, the seventh in the ancestral lines. Metshafe Aksum or the Ethiopian Book of Aksum identifies Itiopis as the twelfth king of Ethiopia and the father of Aksumawi. The Ethiopians pronounce Ethiopia እትዮጵያ with a Sades or the sixth sound እ as in incorporate and the graph ጰ has no equivalent in English or Latin graphs. Ethiopis is believed to be the twelfth direct descendant of Adam. His father is identified as Kush, while his grandfather is known as Kam.[31]

In the 15th-century Ge'ez Book of Axum, the name is ascribed to a legendary individual called Ityopp'is. He was an extra-biblical son of Cush, son of Ham, said to have founded the city of Axum.[32]

The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from Αἰθίοψ, "an Ethiopian") is a compound word, later explained as derived from the Greek words αἴθω and ὤψ (eithō "I burn" + ōps "face"). According to the Liddell-Scott Jones Greek-English Lexicon, the designation properly translates as burnt-face in noun form and red-brown in adjectival form.[33] The historian Herodotus used the appellation to denote those parts of Africa south of the Sahara that were then known within the Ecumene (habitable world).[34] The earliest mention of the term is found in the works of Homer, where it is used to refer to two people groups, one in Africa and one in the east from eastern Turkey to India.[35] This Greek name was borrowed into Amharic as ኢትዮጵያ, ʾĪtyōṗṗyā.

In Greco-Roman epigraphs, Aethiopia was a specific toponym for ancient Nubia.[36] At least as early as c. 850,[37] the name Aethiopia also occurs in many translations of the Old Testament in allusion to Nubia. The ancient Hebrew texts identify Nubia instead as Kush.[38] However, in the New Testament, the Greek term Aithiops does occur, referring to a servant of the Kandake, the queen of Kush.[39]

Following the Hellenic and biblical traditions, the Monumentum Adulitanum, a 3rd-century inscription belonging to the Aksumite Empire, indicates that Aksum's ruler governed an area that was flanked to the west by the territory of Ethiopia and Sasu. The Aksumite King Ezana eventually conquered Nubia the following century, and the Aksumites thereafter appropriated the designation "Ethiopians" for their own kingdom. In the Ge'ez version of the Ezana inscription, Aἰθίοπες is equated with the unvocalized Ḥbšt and Ḥbśt (Ḥabashat), and denotes for the first time the highland inhabitants of Aksum. This new demonym was subsequently rendered as ḥbs ('Aḥbāsh) in Sabaic and as Ḥabasha in Arabic.[36] Derivatives of this are used in some languages that use loanwords from Arabic, for example in Malay Habsyah.[citation needed]

In English, and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was historically known as Abyssinia. This toponym was derived from the Latinized form of the ancient Habash.[40]

History

Main article: History of Ethiopia

Further information: Ethiopian historiography

Prehistory

This article contains Ethiopic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Ethiopic characters.

Main article: Prehistoric Ethiopia

A Homo sapiens idaltu hominid skull

Several important finds have propelled Ethiopia and the surrounding region to the forefront of palaeontology. The oldest hominid discovered to date in Ethiopia is the 4.2 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi) found by Tim D. White in 1994.[41] The most well-known hominid discovery is Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy). Known locally as Dinkinesh, the specimen was found in the Awash Valley of Afar Region in 1974 by Donald Johanson, and is one of the most complete and best-preserved adult Australopithecine fossils ever uncovered. Lucy's taxonomic name refers to the region where the discovery was made. This hominid is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago.[42][43][44]

Ethiopia is also considered one of the earliest sites of the emergence of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens. The oldest of these local fossil finds, the Omo remains, were excavated in the southwestern Omo Kibish area and have been dated to the Middle Paleolithic, around 200,000 years ago.[45] Additionally, skeletons of Homo sapiens idaltu were found at a site in the Middle Awash valley. Dated to approximately 160,000 years ago, they may represent an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens, or the immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans.[46] Archaic Homo sapiens fossils excavated at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco have since been dated to an earlier period, about 300,000 years ago,[47] while Omo-Kibish I (Omo I) from southern Ethiopia is the oldest anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeleton currently known (196 ± 5 kya).[48]

According to some anthropologists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations arrived in the region during the ensuing Neolithic era from the family's proposed urheimat ("original homeland") in the Nile Valley,[49] or the Near East.[50] The majority of scholars today propose that the Afroasiatic family developed in northeast Africa because of the higher diversity of lineages in that region, a telltale sign of linguistic origin.[51][52][53]

In 2019, archaeologists discovered a 30,000-year-old Middle Stone Age rock shelter at the Fincha Habera site in Bale Mountains at an elevation of 3,469 metres (11,381 feet) above sea level. At this high altitude, humans are susceptible both to hypoxia and to extreme weather. According to a study published in the journal Science, this dwelling is proof of the earliest permanent human occupation at high altitude yet discovered. Thousands of animal bones, hundreds of stone tools, and ancient fireplaces were discovered, revealing a diet that featured giant mole rats.[54][55][56][57][58][59][60]

Evidence of some of the earliest known stone-tipped projectile weapons (a characteristic tool of Homo sapiens), the stone tips of javelins or throwing spears, were discovered in 2013 at the Ethiopian site of Gademotta, which date to around 279,000 years ago.[61] In 2019, additional Middle Stone Age projectile weapons were found at Aduma, dated 100,000–80,000 years ago, in the form of points considered likely to belong to darts delivered by spear throwers.[62]

Antiquity

Main articles: Dʿmt and Kingdom of Aksum

Aksumite currency of the Aksumite king Endybis, 227–35, at the British Museum[d]

In 980 BC, Dʿmt was established in present-day Eritrea and the northern part of Ethiopia in the Tigray region, and is widely believed to be the successor state to Punt. This polity's capital was located at Yeha in what is now northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilization to be a native Ethiopian one, although in earlier times many suggested it was Sabaean-influenced because of the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea.[63]

Other scholars regard Dʿmt as the result of a union of Afroasiatic-speaking cultures of the Cushitic and Semitic branches; namely, local Agaw peoples and Sabaeans from Southern Arabia. However, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is thought to have developed independently from the Sabaean language. As early as 2000 BC, other Semitic speakers were living in Ethiopia and Eritrea where Ge'ez developed.[64][65] Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century. It may have been a trading or military colony in alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Axumite state.[63]

The Empire of Axum at its peak in the 6th century

After the fall of Dʿmt during the 4th century BC, the Ethiopian plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. In the 1st century AD, the Kingdom of Aksum emerged in what is now Tigray Region and Eritrea. According to the medieval Book of Axum, the kingdom's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush.[32] Aksum would later at times extend its rule into Yemen on the other side of the Red Sea.[66] The Persian prophet Mani listed Axum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his era, during the 3rd century.[67] It is also believed that there was a connection between Egyptian and Ethiopian churches. There is faint evidence that the Aksumites were associated with the Queen of Sheba, via their royal inscription.[68]

Around 316 AD, Frumentius and his brother Edesius from Tyre accompanied their uncle on a voyage to Ethiopia. When the vessel stopped at a Red Sea port, the natives killed all the travellers except the two brothers, who were taken to the court as slaves. They were given positions of trust by the monarch, and they converted members of the royal court to Christianity. Frumentius became the first bishop of Aksum.[69] A coin dated to 324 shows that Ethiopia was the second country to officially adopt Christianity (after Armenia did so in 301), although the religion may have been at first confined to court circles; it was the first major power to do so. The Aksumites were accustomed to the Greco-Roman sphere of influence, but they embarked on significant cultural ties and trade connections between the Indian subcontinent and the Roman Empire via the Silk Road, primarily exporting ivory, tortoise shell, gold and emeralds, and importing silk and spices.[68][70] The country's gold production in 2015 is 9 metric tons.[71]

Middle Ages

Main article: Ethiopia in the Middle Ages

The kingdom adopted the name "Ethiopia" during the reign of Ezana in the 4th century. After the conquest of Kingdom of Kush in 330, the Aksumite territory reached its peak between the 5th and 6th centuries.[63] This period was interrupted by several incursions into the South Arabian protectorate, including Jewish Dhu Nuwas of the Himyarite Kingdom and the Aksumite–Persian wars. In 575, the Aksumites besieged and retook Sana'a following the assassination of its governor Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan. The Red Sea was left to the Rashidun Caliphate in 646, and the port city of Adulis was plundered by Arab Muslims in the 8th century; along with irrevocable land degradation, claimed climate change and sporadic rainfall precipitation from 730 to 760,[72] these factors likely caused the kingdom to decline in power as part of an important trade route.[63][73] Aksum came to an end in 960 when Queen Gudit defeated the last king of Aksum.[74] In response, the remnant of the Aksumite population to shift into the southern region and establish the Zagwe dynasty, changing its capital to Lalibela.[75] Zagwe's rule ended when an Amhara noble man Yekuno Amlak revolted against King Yetbarak and established the Ethiopian Empire (known by exonym "Abyssinia").

Biete Medhane Alem, built during Zagwe dynasty in the Middle Ages

The Ethiopian Empire initiated territorial expansion under the leadership of Amda Seyon I. He launched campaigns against his Muslim adversaries to the east, resulting in a significant shift in the balance of power in favor of the Christians for the next two centuries. After Amda Seyon's successful eastern campaigns, most of the Muslim principalities in the Horn of Africa came under the suzerainty of the Ethiopian Empire. Stretching from Gojjam to the Somali Coast in Zelia.[76] Among these Muslim entities was the Sultanate of Ifat. During the reign of Emperor Zara Yaqob, the Ethiopian Empire reached its pinnacle. His rule was marked by the consolidation of territorial acquisitions from earlier rulers, the oversight of the construction of numerous churches and monasteries, the active promotion of literature and art, and the strengthening of central imperial authority.[77][78][79] Ifat's successor, the Adal Sultanate,[80] tried to conquer Ethiopia during the Ethiopian–Adal War, but was ultimately defeated at the 1543 Battle of Wayna Daga.[81]

By the 16th century, an influx of migration by ethnic Oromo into northern parts of the region fragmented the empire's power. Embarking from present-day Guji and Borena Zone, the Oromos were largely motivated by several folkloric conceptions—beginning with Moggaasaa[82] and Liqimssa—many of whom related to their raids. This persisted until gada of Meslé.[83][84] According to Abba Bahrey, the earliest expansion occurred under Emperor Dawit II (luba Melbah), when they encroached to Bale before invading Adal Sultanate.[85]

Ethiopia saw major diplomatic contact with Portugal from the 17th century, mainly related to religion. Beginning in 1555,[86] Portuguese Jesuits attempted to develop Roman Catholicism as the state religion. After several failures, they sent several missionaries in 1603, including the most influential, Spanish Jesuit Pedro Paez.[87] Under Emperor Susenyos I, Roman Catholicism became the state religion of the Ethiopian Empire in 1622.[88] This decision caused an uprising by the Orthodox populace.[89]

Early Modern Period (1632–1855)

Main articles: Gondarine period and Zemene Mesafint

A copy of 17th century philosophical and ethical treatise by Ethiopian philosopher Zara Yaqob

Fasil Ghebbi, one of the key castles of the Gondarine period

In 1632, Emperor Fasilides halted Roman Catholic state administration, restoring Orthodox Tewahedo as the state religion.[88] Fasilides' reign solidified imperial power, relocating the capital to Gondar in 1636, marking the beginning of the "Gondarine period".[90] He reclaimed lands, and exiled Jesuits to Fremona. During his rule, Fasilides constructed the iconic royal fortress, Fasil Ghebbi, built forty-four churches,[91] and revived Ethiopian art. He is also credited with building seven stone bridges over the Blue Nile River.[92]

Gondar's power declined after the death of Iyasu I in 1706. Following Iyasu II's death in 1755, Empress Mentewab brought her brother, Ras Wolde Leul, to Gondar, making him Ras Bitwaded. This led to regnal conflict between Mentewab's Quaregnoch and the Wollo group led by Wubit. In 1767, Ras Mikael Sehul, a regent in Tigray Province, seized Gondar, killing the child Iyoas I in 1769, the reigning emperor, and installed 70-year-old Yohannes II.[93]

Between 1769 and 1855, Ethiopia witnessed the Zemene Mesafint or "Age of Princes," a period of isolation. Emperors became figureheads, controlled by regional lords and noblemen like Ras Mikael Sehul, Ras Wolde Selassie of Tigray, and by the Yejju Oromo dynasty of the Wara Sheh, including Ras Gugsa of Yejju. Before the Zemene Mesafint, Emperor Iyoas I had introduced the Oromo language (Afaan Oromo) at court, replacing Amharic.[94][95]

Age of Imperialism (1855–1916)

Main articles: British expedition to Abyssinia, Menelik's Invasions, Egyptian–Ethiopian War, First Italo-Ethiopian War, and Mahdist War

Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855–1868) brought an end to Zemene Mesafint.

Emperor Menelik II defended Ethiopia's sovereignty during the age of imperialism.

Ethiopian isolationism ended following a British mission that concluded with an alliance between the two nations, but it was not until 1855 that the Amhara kingdoms of northern Ethiopia (Gondar, Gojjam, and Shewa) were briefly united after the power of the emperor was restored beginning with the reign of Tewodros II.[96][97] Tewodros II began a process of consolidation, centralisation, and state-building that would be continued by succeeding emperors. This process reduced the power of regional rulers, restructured the empire's administration, and created a professional army. These changes created the basis for establishing the effective sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Ethiopian state.[98] In 1875 and 1876, Ottoman and Egyptian forces, accompanied by many European and American advisors, twice invaded Abyssinia but were initially defeated.[99] From 1885 to 1889 (under Yohannes IV), Ethiopia joined the Mahdist War allied to Britain, the Ottomans, and Egypt against the Sudanese Mahdist State. In 1887, Menelik II, king of Shewa, invaded the Emirate of Harar after his victory at the Battle of Chelenqo.[100] On 10 March 1889, Yohannes IV was killed by the Sudanese Khalifah Abdullah's army whilst leading his army in the Battle of Gallabat.[101]

Ethiopia, in roughly its current form, began under the reign of Menelik II, who was Emperor from 1889 until his death in 1913. From his base in the central province of Shewa, Menelik set out to annex territories to the south, east, and west[102] — areas inhabited by the Oromo, Sidama, Gurage, Welayta, and other peoples.[103] He achieved this with the help of Ras Gobana Dacche's Shewan Oromo militia, which occupied lands that had not been held since Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi's war, as well as other areas that had never been under Ethiopian rule.[104]

For his leadership, despite opposition from more traditional elements of society, Menelik II was heralded as a national hero. He had signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Italy in May 1889, by which Italy would recognize Ethiopia's sovereignty so long as Italy could control an area north of Ethiopia (now part of modern Eritrea). In return, Italy was to provide Menelik with weapons and support him as emperor. The Italians used the time between the signing of the treaty and its ratification by the Italian government to expand their territorial claims. This First Italo-Ethiopian War culminated in the Battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896, in which Italy's colonial forces were defeated by the Ethiopians.[103][105] During this time, about a third of the population died in the Great Ethiopian Famine (1888 to 1892),[106][107] and the rinderpest swept through the area, destroying much of the herd economy. On 11 October 1897, Ethiopia adopted the colours of the pan-African flag with green, yellow and red stripes in representation of pan-Africanist ideology.

Haile Selassie I era (1916–1974)

Main articles: Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Italian Ethiopia, Italian East Africa, Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Eritrean War of Independence

Ethiopian troops sent by the government under the Emperor Haile Selassie I during the Korean War fighting for South Korean independence

Emperor Haile Selassie I with U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the end of World War II

The early 20th century was marked by the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari). He came to power after Lij Iyasu was deposed, and undertook a nationwide modernization campaign from 1916 when he was made a Ras and Regent (Inderase) for the Empress Regnant Zewditu, and became the de facto ruler of the Ethiopian Empire. Following Zewditu's death, on 2 November 1930, he succeeded her as emperor.[108] In 1931, Haile Selassie endowed Ethiopia with its first constitution in emulation of Imperial Japan's 1890 Constitution.[109] The independence of Ethiopia was interrupted by the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, beginning when it was invaded by Italy in early October 1935, and by subsequent Italian rule of the country (1936–1941) after Italian victory in the war.[110] Italy, however, never managed to secure the country in its totality, due to resistance from the Arbegnoch; this made Ethiopia, along with Liberia, the only African countries to never be fully colonized.[111][112] Following the entry of Italy into World War II, British Empire forces, together with the Arbegnoch, liberated Ethiopia in the course of the East African campaign in 1941. The country was placed under British military administration, and then Ethiopia's full sovereignty was restored with the signing of the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement in December 1944.[113]

On 24 October 1945, Ethiopia became a founding member of the United Nations. In 1952, Haile Selassie orchestrated a federation with Eritrea. He dissolved this in 1962 and annexed Eritrea, resulting in the Eritrean War of Independence.[114] Haile Selassie also played a leading role in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).[115] Opinion within Ethiopia turned against Haile Selassie, owing to the worldwide 1973 oil crisis causing a sharp increase in gasoline prices starting on 13 February 1974, leading to student and worker protests.[116] The feudal oligarchical cabinet of Aklilu Habte-Wold was toppled, and a new government was formed with Endelkachew Makonnen serving as Prime Minister.[117]

Derg era (1974–1991)

See also: Ethiopian Revolution, Derg, People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Civil War, Red Terror, and 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia

Mengistu Haile Mariam was sentenced to death in absentia for committing crimes during his rule.

Haile Selassie's rule ended on 12 September 1974, when he was deposed by the Derg, a committee made up of military and police officers.[118] After the execution of 60 former government and military officials,[119] the new Provisional Military Administrative Council abolished the monarchy in March 1975 and established Ethiopia as a Marxist-Leninist state.[120] The abolition of feudalism, increased literacy, nationalization, and sweeping land reform including the resettlement and villagization from the Ethiopian Highlands became priorities.[121]

After a power struggle in 1977, Mengistu Haile Mariam gained undisputed leadership of the Derg.[122] In 1977, Somalia, which had previously been receiving assistance and arms from the USSR, invaded Ethiopia in the Ogaden War, capturing part of the Ogaden region. Ethiopia recovered it after it began receiving massive military aid from the Soviet bloc countries.[123][124][125] By the end of the seventies, Mengistu presided over the second-largest army in all of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a formidable air force and navy.

In 1976–78, up to 500,000 were killed as a result of the Red Terror,[126] a violent political repression campaign by the Derg against various opposition groups.[127][128][129] In 1987, the Derg dissolved itself and established the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) upon the adoption of the 1987 Constitution of Ethiopia.[130] A 1983–85 famine affected around 8 million people, resulting in 1 million dead. Insurrections against authoritarian rule sprang up, particularly in the northern regions of Eritrea and Tigray. The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) merged with other ethnically based opposition movements in 1989, to form the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).[131]

The collapse of Marxism–Leninism during the revolutions of 1989 coincided with the Soviet Union stopping aid to Ethiopia altogether in 1990.[132][133][134] EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa in May 1991, and Mengistu fled the country and was granted asylum in Zimbabwe.[135][136]

Federal Democratic Republic (1991–present)

Main article: History of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Further information: Eritrean–Ethiopian border conflict, Ethiopian civil conflict (2018–present), and Tigray war

See also: 1993 Eritrean independence referendum

Meles Zenawi, a panelist at World Economic Forum on Africa 2012

In July 1991, the EPRDF convened a National Conference to establish the Transitional Government of Ethiopia composed of an 87-member Council of Representatives and guided by a national charter that functioned as a transitional constitution.[137] In 1994, a new constitution was written that established a parliamentary republic with a bicameral legislature and a judicial system.[138]

In April 1993, Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia after a national referendum.[139] In May 1998, a border dispute with Eritrea led to the Eritrean–Ethiopian War, which lasted until June 2000 and cost both countries an estimated $1 million a day.[140] This had a negative effect on Ethiopia's economy, and a border conflict between the two countries would continue until 2018.[141][142] As of 2018, further civil war in Ethiopia continues, mainly due to destabilization of the country.

Ethnic violence rose during the late 2010s and early 2020s,[143][144] with various clashes and conflicts leading to millions of Ethiopians being displaced.[145][146][147]

The federal government decided that elections for 2020 (later being rescheduled to 2021) be cancelled, due to health and safety concerns about COVID-19.[148] The Tigray Region's TPLF opposed this, and proceeded to hold elections anyway on 9 September 2020.[149][150] Relations between the federal government and Tigray deteriorated rapidly,[151] and in November 2020, Ethiopia began a military offensive in Tigray in response to attacks on army units stationed there, marking the beginning of the Tigray war.[152][153] By March 2022, as many as 500,000 people had died as a result of violence and famine.[154][155][156] After a number of peace and mediation proposals in the intervening years, Ethiopia and the Tigrayan rebel forces agreed to a cessation of hostilities on 2 November 2022.[157] Coupled with OLA insurgency, the federal government relations with Fano militias, who previously allied to the government in the Tigray War, deteriorated in mid-2023, resulting in a war in the Amhara Region. According to reports conducted by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), mass human rights violations carried out by ENDF troops including door-to-door searches, extrajudicial killings, massacres and detentions. Notable incident includes the Merawi massacre in early 2024, which left 50 to 100 residents dead in Merawi town in Amhara.[158][159]

Geography

Main article: Geography of Ethiopia

Relief map of Ethiopia

At 1,104,300 square kilometres (426,372.61 sq mi),[160] Ethiopia is the world's 26th-largest country, comparable in size to Bolivia. It lies between the 3rd parallel north and the 15th parallel north and longitudes 33rd meridian east and 48th meridian east.

The major portion of Ethiopia lies in the Horn of Africa, which is the easternmost part of the African landmass. The territories that have frontiers with Ethiopia are Eritrea to the north and then, moving in a clockwise direction, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Sudan. Within Ethiopia is a vast highland complex of mountains and dissected plateaus divided by the Great Rift Valley, which runs generally southwest to northeast and is surrounded by lowlands, steppes, or semi-desert. There is a great diversity of terrain with wide variations in climate, soils, natural vegetation and settlement patterns.

Ethiopia is an ecologically diverse country, ranging from the deserts along the eastern border to the tropical forests in the south to extensive Afromontane in the northern and southwestern parts. Lake Tana in the north is the source of the Blue Nile. It also has many endemic species, notably the gelada, the walia ibex and the Ethiopian wolf ("Simien fox"). The wide range of altitude has given the country a variety of ecologically distinct areas, and this has helped to encourage the evolution of endemic species in ecological isolation.

The nation is a land of geographical contrasts, ranging from the vast fertile west, with its forests and numerous rivers, to the world's hottest settlement of Dallol in its north. The Ethiopian Highlands are the largest continuous mountain ranges in Africa, and the Sof Omar Caves contains the largest cave on the continent. Ethiopia also has the second-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa.[161]

Climate

Main articles: Climate of Ethiopia and Climate change in Ethiopia

Köppen climate classification of Ethiopia

The predominant climate type is tropical monsoon, with wide topographic-induced variation. The Ethiopian Highlands cover most of the country and have a climate which is generally considerably cooler than other regions at similar proximity to the Equator. Most of the country's major cities are located at elevations of around 2,000–2,500 m (6,562–8,202 ft) above sea level, including historic capitals such as Gondar and Axum. The modern capital, Addis Ababa, is situated on the foothills of Mount Entoto at an elevation of around 2,400 metres (7,900 ft). It experiences a mild climate year round. With temperatures fairly uniform year round, the seasons in Addis Ababa are largely defined by rainfall: a dry season from October to February, a light rainy season from March to May, and a heavy rainy season from June to September. The average annual rainfall is approximately 1,200 millimetres (47 in).

There are on average seven hours of sunshine per day. The dry season is the sunniest time of the year, though even at the height of the rainy season in July and August there are still usually several hours per day of bright sunshine. The average annual temperature in Addis Ababa is 16 °C (60.8 °F), with daily maximum temperatures averaging 20–25 °C (68.0–77.0 °F) throughout the year, and overnight lows averaging 5–10 °C (41.0–50.0 °F).

Most major cities and tourist sites in Ethiopia lie at a similar elevation to Addis Ababa and have a comparable climate. In less elevated regions, particularly the lower lying Ethiopian xeric grasslands and shrublands in the east of Ethiopia, the climate can be significantly hotter and drier. Dallol, in the Danakil Depression in this eastern zone, has the world's highest average annual temperature of 34 °C (93.2 °F).

The Blue Nile falls during winter provides over 86 percent of the Nile river's water coming from melted snow in the Simien mountains below 0.[162][163]

Ethiopia is vulnerable to many of the effects of climate change. These include increases in temperature and changes in precipitation.[164] Climate change in Ethiopia threatens food security and the economy, which is agriculture based.[165] Many Ethiopians have been forced to leave their homes and travel as far as the Gulf, Southern Africa and Europe.[166]

Since April 2019, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has promoted Beautifying Sheger, a development project that aims to reduce the negative effects of climate change – among other things – in the capital city Addis Ababa.[167] In the following May, the government held "Dine for Sheger", a fundraising event in order to cover some of the $1 billion needed through the public.[168] $25 million was raised through the expensive event, both through the cost of attending and donations.[169] Two Chinese railway companies under the Belt and Road Initiative between China and Ethiopia had supplied funds to develop 12 of the total 56 kilometres.[170]

Biodiversity

Main article: Wildlife of Ethiopia

See also: Environmental issues in Ethiopia and Deforestation in Ethiopia

A Walia Ibex in Simien Mountains National Park, one of the national symbols of Ethiopia, found only in the north of the country

Ethiopia is a global centre of avian diversity. To date more than 856 bird species have been recorded in Ethiopia, twenty of which are endemic to the country.[171] Sixteen species are endangered or critically endangered. Many of these birds feed on butterflies, like the Bicyclus anynana.[172][full citation needed]

Historically, throughout the African continent, wildlife populations have been rapidly declining due to logging, civil wars, pollution, poaching, and other human factors.[173] A 17-year-long civil war, along with severe drought, negatively affected Ethiopia's environmental conditions, leading to even greater habitat degradation.[174] Habitat destruction is a factor that leads to endangerment. When changes to a habitat occur rapidly, animals do not have time to adjust. Human impact threatens many species, with greater threats expected as a result of climate change induced by greenhouse gases.[175] With carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 of 6,494,000 tonnes, Ethiopia contributes just 0.02% to the annual human-caused release of greenhouse gases.[176]

Ethiopia has 31 endemic species of mammals.[177] Ethiopia has many species listed as critically endangered and vulnerable to global extinction. The threatened species in Ethiopia can be broken down into three categories (based on IUCN ratings): critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable.[177]

Ethiopia is one of the eight fundamental and independent centres of origin for cultivated plants in the world.[178] However, deforestation is a major concern for Ethiopia as studies suggest loss of forest contributes to soil erosion, loss of nutrients in the soil, loss of animal habitats, and reduction in biodiversity. At the beginning of the 20th century, around 420,000 km2 (or 35%) of Ethiopia's land was covered by trees, but recent research indicates that forest cover is now approximately 11.9% of the area.[179] The country had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.16/10, ranking it 50th globally out of 172 countries.[180]

Ethiopia loses an estimated 1,410 km2 of natural forests each year due to firewood collection, conversion to farmland, overgrazing, and use of forest wood for building material. Between 1990 and 2005 the country lost approximately 21,000 km2 of forests.[181] Current government programs to control deforestation consist of education, promoting reforestation programs, and providing raw materials which are alternatives to timber. In rural areas the government also provides non-timber fuel sources and access to non-forested land to promote agriculture without destroying forest habitat.[182]

Organizations such as SOS and Farm Africa are working with the federal government and local governments to create a system of forest management.[183]

Government and politics

Government

Main articles: Government of Ethiopia, Law of Ethiopia, and Judiciary of Ethiopia

See also: Rulers and Heads of State of Ethiopia

House of Peoples' Representatives is the lower house of the Ethiopian Federal Parliamentary Assembly.

Ethiopia is a federal parliamentary republic, wherein the Prime Minister is the head of government, and the President is the head of state but with largely ceremonial powers. Executive power is exercised by the government and federal legislative power vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament. The House of Federation is the upper chamber of the bicameral legislature with 108 seats, and the lower chamber is the House of Peoples' Representatives (HoPR) with 547 seats. The House of Federation is chosen by the regional councils whereas MPs of the HoPR are elected directly, in turn, they elect the president for a six-year term and the prime minister for a 5-year term.[184]

The Federal Supreme Court is the highest court determining constitutionality of ordeals in the nation.

The Ethiopian judiciary consists of dual system with two court structures: the federal and state courts. The FDRE Constitution vested federal judicial authority to the Federal Supreme Court which can overturn and review decisions of subordinate federal courts; itself has regular division assigned for fundamental errors of law. In addition, the Supreme Court can perform circuit hearings in established five states at any states of federal levels or "area designated for its jurisdiction" if deemed "necessary for the efficient rendering of justice".[185][186]

The Federal Supreme Proclamation granted three subject matter principles: laws, parties and place to federal court jurisdiction, first "cases arising under the Constitution, federal laws and international treaties", second over "parties specified by federal laws".[187]

On the basis of Article 78 of the 1994 Ethiopian Constitution, the judiciary is completely independent of the executive and the legislature.[188] To ensure this, the President and Vice President of the Supreme Court are appointed by Parliament on the nomination of Prime Minister. Once elected, the executive power has no authority to remove them from office. Other judges are nominated by the Federal Judicial Administration Council (FJAC) on the basis of transparent criteria and the Prime Minister's recommendation for appointment in the HoPR. In all cases, judges cannot be removed from their duty unless they retired, violated disciplinary rules, gross incompatibility, or inefficiency to unfit due to ill health. Contrary, the majority vote of HoPR have the right to sanction removal in federal judiciary level or state council in cases of state judges.[189] In 2015, the realities of this provision were questioned in a report prepared by Freedom House.[190]

Politics

Taye Atske Selassie

President

(representative head of state) Abiy Ahmed

Prime Minister

(head of government)

Post-1995, Ethiopia's politics has been liberalized which promotes all-encompassing reforms to the country. Today, its economy is based on mixed, market-oriented principles.[189] Ethiopia has twelve semi-autonomous administrative regions that have the power to raise and spend their own revenues.[citation needed]

The first multiparty election took place in May 1995, which was won by the EPRDF.[191] The president of the transitional government, EPRDF leader Meles Zenawi, became the first Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and Negasso Gidada was elected its president.[192] Meles' government was consistently re-elected; however, these results were heavily criticized by international observers, and denounced by the opposition as fraudulent.[193]

Meles died on 20 August 2012 in Brussels, where he was being treated for an unspecified illness.[194] Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn was appointed as a new prime minister until the 2015 elections,[195] and remained so afterwards with his party in control of every parliamentary seat.[196] On 15 February 2018, Hailemariam resigned as Prime Minister, following years of protests and a state of emergency.[197][198][199] Abiy Ahmed became prime minister following Hailemariam's resignation. He made a historic visit to Eritrea in 2018, ending the state of conflict between the two countries,[142] and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.[200]

According to the Democracy Index published by the United Kingdom-based Economist Intelligence Unit in late 2010, Ethiopia was an "authoritarian regime", ranking as the 118th-most democratic out of 167 countries.[201] Ethiopia had dropped 13 places on the list since 2008, and the 2010 report attributed the drop to the government's crackdown on opposition activities, media, and civil society before the 2010 parliamentary election, which the report argued had made Ethiopia a de facto one-party state.[202]

Accompanied by pervasive internal and intercommunal conflicts in the 21st century, the Ethiopian government resorted to authoritarian structure, severing democratic and human rights.[203] Freedom House, who has worked on Ethiopia since 2008, indicates that Ethiopia is "Not Free" state due to very poor fundamental rights (political and civil liberties) recorded in both EPRDF and Prosperity Party regimes.[204][205] Under Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia is experiencing democratic backsliding since 2019 marked by turbulent period of internal conflict, jailing opposition group members and limit media freedom.[206][207][208]

Administrative divisions

Main articles: Subdivisions of Ethiopia, Regions of Ethiopia, List of zones of Ethiopia, Districts of Ethiopia, and Wards of Ethiopia

Ethiopia is administratively divided into four levels: regions, zones, districts (woredas) and wards (kebele).[209][210] The country comprises 12 regions and two city administrations under these regions, plenty of zones, woredas and neighbourhood administration: kebeles. The two federal-level city administrations are Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa.[211]

Map of regions and zones of Ethiopia

Foreign relations

Main article: Foreign relations of Ethiopia

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (bottom row, fourth from left) in G8 Group meeting in 2007

Ethiopia was historically a trading nation that exported goods such as gold, ivory, exotic animals, and incense.[212] Modern Ethiopian foreign relations began under Emperor Tewodros II, who during his reign sought to re-establish a cohesive Ethiopian state, but was thwarted by the British expedition of 1868.[213] Since then, the country was seen as redundant by world powers until the opening of Suez Canal due to an influence of Mahdist War.[214][clarification needed]

The African Union Headquarters located in Addis Ababa. Since its conception, Ethiopia is a founding member to the AU.

Today, Ethiopia maintains strong relations with China, Israel, Mexico, Turkey and India as well as neighboring countries. Ethiopia is a strategic partner of Global War on Terrorism and African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).[215] US. Former U.S. President Barack Obama was the first incumbent U.S. president to visit Ethiopia in July 2015; the speech he gave to the African Union during this trip focused on combatting Islamic terrorism.[216][217] Emigration from Ethiopia is primarily directed towards Europe, including Italy, the United Kingdom and Sweden, as well as Canada and Australia, while emigration to the Middle East is primarily to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Ethiopia is founding member of the Group of 24 (G-24), the Non-Aligned Movement and the G77. In 1963, the Organization of African Unity, which later renamed itself the African Union, was founded in Addis Ababa, which today hosts the secretariat of the African Union, the African Union Commission. In addition, Ethiopia is also a member of the Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Standby Force[218] and many of global NGOs focused on Africa.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023

Ethiopia's foreign relations with both Sudan and Egypt are somewhat fraught owing to the effects the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, which was escalated in 2020, would have on water rights in the region.[219][220] Despite six upstream countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania) signing the Nile Basin Initiative in 2010, Egypt and Sudan rejected a water sharing treaty, citing the reduction of amount of water to the Nile Basin and the challenge it would pose to their historic connection of water rights.[221][222] In 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed warned that "No force can stop Ethiopia from building a dam. If there is need to go to war, we could get millions readied."[223]

Ethiopia is one of the African countries that was a founding member of League of Nations, which served as the predecessor for the United Nations, since 1923. UN taskforces in Ethiopia deal primarily with humanitarian issues and development. Some of its agencies[which?] maintain regional ties with United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union. The UN prioritizes sustainable development in Ethiopia, including fighting poverty, sustainable economic growth, climate change policy, educational and healthcare provisions, increasing employment, and environmental protection.[224]

Military

Main articles: Ethiopian National Defense Force and Military history of Ethiopia

Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) training under AMISOM, 2021

The Ethiopian army's origins and military traditions date back to the earliest history of Ethiopia. Due to Ethiopia's location between the Middle East and Africa, it has long been in the middle of Eastern and Western politics and has been subject to foreign invasions. In 1579, the Ottoman Empire's attempt to expand from a coastal base at Massawa during the Ottoman conquest of Habesh was defeated.[225] The Army of the Ethiopian Empire was also able to defeat the Egyptians in 1876 at Gura, led by Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV.[226] Ethiopia only has 3 branches inside the military, consisting of the Army, Airforce, and a Navy although it is landlocked. With an annual budget of over $1 billion dollars, it is the largest armed force in East Africa, and one of the largest in Africa.[227][228]

Law enforcement

Ethiopia has two main federal law enforcement agencies at the federal level, to which being the Ethiopian Federal Police, and the National Intelligence Security Service. The NISS serving both as a spy agency and domestic law enforcement agency has national jurisdiction for counterterrorism, and foreign related counter espionage activities and protecting national security. It also has authority related to international economic crimes related of which to Ethiopia as a whole.[229][230] It alongside the EFP (Ethiopian Federal Police) who both enforce federal laws domestically and for the National Intelligence Security Service cooperate internationally and enforce border regulations and peoples and products coming in and out in Ethiopia.[231] The EFP mostly enforcing non-international, and non-espionage crimes, enforcing civil rights related subjects of matter and domestic financial crimes. At the regional level Ethiopia has 12 regionals statewide police departments, and 2 federally chartered police forces, those being the Addis Ababa Police, and Dire Dawa Police forces.[232][233]

Economy

Main articles: Economy of Ethiopia and Industrial sector in Ethiopia

Development of GDP per capita

Ethiopia registered the fastest economic growth under Meles Zenawi's administration.[234] According to the IMF, Ethiopia was one of the fastest growing economies in the world, registering over 10% economic growth from 2004 through 2009.[235] It was the fastest-growing non-oil-dependent African economy in the years 2007 and 2008.[236] In 2015, the World Bank highlighted that Ethiopia had witnessed rapid economic growth with real domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 10.9% between 2004 and 2014.[237]

In 2008 and 2011, Ethiopia's growth performance and considerable development gains were challenged by high inflation and a difficult balance of payments situation. Inflation surged to 40% in August 2011 because of loose monetary policy, large civil service wage increase in early 2011, and high food prices.[238]

In spite of fast growth in recent years, GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the world, and the economy faces a number of serious structural problems. Based on the most recent data from 2019, 68.7% of the population is affected by multidimensional poverty and an additional 18.4% vulnerable to it.[30]

With a focused investment in public infrastructure and industrial parks, Ethiopia is attempting to address its structural problems by becoming a hub for light manufacturing in Africa.[239] In 2019 a law was passed allowing expatriate Ethiopians to invest in Ethiopia's financial service industry.[240]

An Ethiopian logistics shipping cargo docked at the Red Sea

The Ethiopian constitution specifies that rights to own land belong only to "the state and the people", but citizens may lease land for up to 99 years, but are unable to mortgage or sell. Renting out land for a maximum of twenty years is allowed and this is expected to ensure that land goes to the most productive user.[citation needed] Land distribution and administration is considered an area where corruption is institutionalized, and facilitation payments as well as bribes are often demanded when dealing with land-related issues.[241] As there is no land ownership, infrastructural projects are most often simply done without asking the land users, which then end up being displaced and without a home or land. A lot of anger and distrust sometimes results in public protests. In addition, agricultural productivity remains low, and frequent droughts still beset the country, also leading to internal displacement.[242]

Energy and hydropower

See also: Energy in Ethiopia and List of power stations in Ethiopia

Ethiopia has 14 major rivers flowing from its highlands, including the Nile. It has the largest water reserves in Africa. As of 2012, hydroelectric plants represented around 88.2% of the total installed electricity generating capacity.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam constructed between 2011 and 2023, set to be the largest dam in Africa

The remaining electrical power was generated from fossil fuels (8.3%) and renewable sources (3.6%).

The electrification rate for the total population in 2016 was 42%, with 85% coverage in urban areas and 26% coverage in rural areas. As of 2016, total electricity production was 11.15 TW⋅h and consumption was 9.062 TW⋅h. There were 0.166 TW⋅h of electricity exported, 0 kW⋅h imported, and 2.784 GW of installed generating capacity.[14] Ethiopia delivers roughly 81% of water volume to the Nile through the river basins of the Blue Nile, Sobat River and Atbara. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan signed a bilateral treaty, the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, which gave both countries exclusive maritime rights over the Nile waters. Ever since, Egypt has discouraged almost all projects in Ethiopia that sought to use the local Nile tributaries. This had the effect of discouraging external financing of hydropower and irrigation projects in western Ethiopia, thereby impeding water resource-based economic development projects. However, Ethiopia is in the process of constructing a large 6,450 MW hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile river. Completed in 2023, this Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is slated to be the largest hydroelectric power station in Africa.[243] The Gibe III hydroelectric project is so far the largest in the country with an installed capacity of 1,870 MW. For the year 2017–18 (2010 E.C) this hydroelectric dam generated 4,900 GW⋅h.[244]

Agriculture

Main article: Agriculture in Ethiopia

Agriculture constitutes around 85% of the labour force. However, the service sector represents the largest portion of the GDP.[14] Many other economic activities depend on agriculture, including marketing, processing, and export of agricultural products. Production is overwhelmingly by small-scale farmers and enterprises, and a large part of commodity exports are provided by the small agricultural cash-crop sector. Principal crops include coffee, legumes, oilseeds, cereals, potatoes, sugarcane, and vegetables. Ethiopia is also a Vavilov centre of diversity for domesticated crops, including enset,[245] coffee, okra and teff.

Exports are almost entirely agricultural commodities (with the exception of gold exports), and coffee is the largest foreign exchange earner. Ethiopia is Africa's second biggest maize producer.[246] According to UN estimations, the per capita GDP of Ethiopia has reached $357 as of 2011.[247]

Exports

Main article: Coffee production in Ethiopia

The Addis Ababa Light Rail system carries over 50,000 passengers a day.[248]

Ethiopia's biggest company Ethiopian Airlines, which has an annual revenue of 6.1 billion dollars and making it the 14th biggest airlines in revenue, contributes to the country's export business.[249]

Ethio Telecom is one of the country's biggest companies which generates over a billion dollars annually.[250]

Ethiopia is often considered as the birthplace of coffee since cultivation began in the 9th century.[251] Exports from Ethiopia in the 2009–2010 financial year totalled US$1.4 billion.[252] Ethiopia produces more coffee than any other nation on the continent.[253] "Coffee provides a livelihood for close to 15 million Ethiopians, 16% of the population. Farmers in the eastern part of the country, where a warming climate is already impacting production, have struggled in recent years, and many are currently reporting largely failed harvests as a result of a prolonged drought".[254]

Ethiopia also has the fifth largest inventory of cattle.[255] Other main export commodities are khat, gold, leather products, and oilseeds. Recent development of the floriculture sector means Ethiopia is poised to become one of the top flower and plant exporters in the world.[256]

Cross-border trade by pastoralists is often informal and beyond state control and regulation. In East Africa, over 95% of cross-border trade is through unofficial channels. The unofficial trade of live cattle, camels, sheep, and goats from Ethiopia sold to Somalia, Djibouti, and Kenya generates an estimated total value of US$250–300 million annually (100 times more than the official figure).[257]

This trade helps lower food prices, increase food security, relieve border tensions, and promote regional integration.[257] However, the unregulated and undocumented nature of this trade runs risks, such as allowing disease to spread more easily across national borders. Furthermore, the government of Ethiopia is purportedly unhappy with lost tax revenue and foreign exchange revenues.[257] Recent initiatives have sought to document and regulate this trade.[257]

With the private sector growing slowly, designer fashion and leather products like bags are becoming a big export business, with Taytu becoming the first luxury designer label in the country.[258] Additional small-scale export products include cereals, pulses, cotton, sugarcane, potatoes, and hides. With the construction of various new dams and growing hydroelectric power projects around the country, Ethiopia also plans to export electric power to its neighbours.[259][260]

Most regard Ethiopia's large water resources and potential as its "white oil" and its coffee resources as "black gold".[261][262]

Transport

Main article: Transport in Ethiopia

Two trans-African automobile routes pass through Ethiopia: the Cairo-Cape Town Highway and the N'Djamena-Djibouti Highway. Ethiopia has 926 km of electrified 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge railways, 656 km for the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway between Addis Ababa and the Port of Djibouti (via Awash)[263] and 270 km for the Awash–Hara Gebeya Railway between Addis Ababa and the twin cities of Dessie/Kombolcha.[264]

Ethiopia had 58 airports as of 2012,[14] and 61 as of 2016.[265] Among these, the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa and the Aba Tenna Dejazmach Yilma International Airport in Dire Dawa accommodate international flights.

Science and technology

Main article: Science and technology in Ethiopia

See also: Ethiopian Golden Age of music

Yared in a piece of 15th century Ethiopian sacred art holding a mequamia (prayer stick)

The music of Ethiopia is extremely diverse, with each of the country's 80 ethnic groups being associated with unique sounds. Ethiopian music uses a distinct modal system that is pentatonic, with characteristically long intervals between some notes. As with many other aspects of Ethiopian culture and tradition, tastes in music and lyrics are strongly linked with those in neighbouring Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, and Sudan.[347][348] Traditional singing in Ethiopia presents diverse styles of polyphony (heterophony, drone, imitation, and counterpoint). Traditionally, lyricism in Ethiopian song writing is strongly associated with views of patriotism or national pride, romance, friendship, and a unique type of memoire known as tizita.

Saint Yared, a 6th-century Aksumite composer, is widely regarded as the forerunner of traditional music of Eritrea and Ethiopia, creating liturgical music of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.[349]

Modern music is traced back to the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, where 40 Armenian orphans called Arba Lijoch arrived from Jerusalem to Addis Ababa. By 1924, the band was almost established as orchestral; but after World War II, several similar bands emerged such as Imperial Bodyguard Band, Army Band, and Police Band.[350]

In the 1960s and 1970s, traditional infused modern Ethiopian music was revived in what is known as the "Golden Age". Several notable musical artists emerged thereafter, for example, Tilahun Gessesse, Alemayehu Eshete, Bizunesh Bekele, Muluken Melesse and Mahmoud Ahmed. It also employed tradition style called tizita. During the Derg regime, these artists were prohibited to perform in the country and often forced into exile in North America and Europe, mixing with jazz and funk influences. For example, Roha Band, Walias Band, and Ethio Stars. By this time, Neway Debebe was critical of the Derg government.[344]

Modern music became developed shortly in the 1990s and 2000s. In this period, the most popular artists were Aster Aweke, Gigi and Teddy Afro. Ethiopian music further modernized in the next decade, employing electronic type and more popular. DJ Rophnan was renowned for pioneering EDM after releasing his debut album Reflection in 2018.[344]

Calendar

Main articles: Ethiopian calendar and Oromo calendar

Ethiopia has several local calendars. The most widely known is the Ethiopian calendar, also known as the Ge'ez calendar, and written with the ancient Ge'ez script, one of the oldest alphabets still in use in the world.[351] It is based on the older Alexandrian or Coptic calendar, which in turn derives from the Egyptian calendar. Like the Coptic calendar, the Ethiopian calendar has twelve months of exactly 30 days each plus five or six epagomenal days, which form a thirteenth month. The Ethiopian months begin on the same days as those of the Coptic calendar, but their names are in Ge'ez.[352]

Like the Julian calendar, the sixth epagomenal day—which in essence is a leap day—is added every four years without exception on 29 August of the Julian calendar, six months before the Julian leap day. Thus, the first day of the Ethiopian year, 1 Mäskäräm, for years between 1901 and 2099 (inclusive), is usually 11 September (Gregorian), but falls on 12 September in years before the Gregorian leap year. It is approximately seven years and three months behind the Gregorian calendar because of an alternate calculation in determining the date of the Annunciation of Jesus.[353]

Another calendrical system was developed around 300 BC by the Oromo people. A lunar-stellar calendar, this Oromo calendar relies on astronomical observations of the moon in conjunction with seven particular stars or constellations. Oromo months (stars/lunar phases) are Bittottessa (Iangulum), Camsa (Pleiades), Bufa (Aldebarran), Waxabajjii (Belletrix), Obora Gudda (Central Orion-Saiph), Obora Dikka (Sirius), Birra (full moon), Cikawa (gibbous moon), Sadasaa (quarter moon), Abrasa (large crescent), Ammaji (medium crescent), and Gurrandala (small crescent).[354]

Media

Main articles: Communications in Ethiopia and Media in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, former headquarters in Addis Ababa

The Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), formerly known as ETV, is the state media. Radio broadcasting was commenced earlier in 1935 before the television service began in 1962 with assistance of British firm Thomson and Emperor Haile Selassie.[355] Since 2015, EBC has upgraded its studios with modernized transmission.

Kana TV is the most popular TV channel in Ethiopia.[356] It is mainly known for dubbing foreign content into Amharic. Over several decades, the state television has served as the major mass media until in the late 2000s, when EBS TV launched as the first private television channel. Moreover, numerous private channels were commenced in 2016, culminating in the growth of privately owned media companies in the country. As an example, Fana TV has been the largest TV network since its launch in 2017.

The most widely circulated newspapers in Ethiopia are Addis Fortune, Capital Ethiopia, Ethiopian Reporter, Addis Zemen (Amharic) and Ethiopian Herald.[357]

The sole internet service provider is the national telecommunications firm Ethio telecom. A large portion of users in the country access the internet through mobile devices.[358] As of July 2016, there are around 4.29 million people who have internet access at their home as compared to a quarter of a million users a decade before that.[359] The Ethiopian government has at times intentionally shut down internet service in the country or restricted access to certain social media sites during periods of political unrest. In August 2016, following protest and demonstration in the Oromia Region, all access to the internet was shut down for a period of two days.[360] In June 2017, the government shut down access to the internet for mobile users during a period that coincided with the administration of university entrance examination. Although the reason for the restriction was not confirmed by the government,[358] the move was similar to a measure taken during the same period in 2016, after a leak of test questions.[361][362]

Cinema

Main article: Cinema of Ethiopia

Ruth Negga is an Ethiopian-born actress.

The first cinema was introduced in 1898, three years after the first world film was projected. Cinematic artifacts ascribed by Italian minister Federico Ciccodicola [it] which then offered to Emperor Menelik II. The early 20th century appearance with spectacle was around 1909 and embraced by documentary or biographical films. Au de Menilek was the first film directed by Charles Martel. The first 16mm black-and-white film dedicated to coronation of Emperor Zewditu, then coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie was filmed. The 1990s saw international booming of Ethiopian films. The most influential people in this era were Haile Gerima, Salem Mekuria, Yemane Demissie, and Teshome Gabriel. Films began modernized in the 2000s and implemented Amharic language. The most internationally grossed films are Selanchi, Difret, Lamb, Prince of Love and Lambadina. The modern era saw several reoccurring actors including Selam Tesfaye, Fryat Yemane, Hanan Tarik, Mahder Assefa, Amleset Muchie and Ruth Negga.

One of the most prestigious film award is Gumma Film Awards held in Addis Ababa. The award, which was started in 2014, broadcast on live television in some stations.[363] Festivals including Addis International Film Festival and the Ethiopian International Film Festival showcase amateur and professional filmmakers works; the latter being voted by judges. They were established in 2007[364] and 2005 respectively.[365]

Cuisine

Main article: Ethiopian cuisine

See also: List of Ethiopian dishes and foods

This meal consisting of injera and several kinds of wat (stew) is typical of Ethiopian cuisine.

The best-known Ethiopian cuisine consists of various types of thick meat stews, known as wat in Ethiopian culture, and vegetable side dishes served on top of injera, a large sourdough flatbread made of teff flour. This is not eaten with utensils, but instead the injera is used to scoop up the entrées and side dishes. Almost universally in Ethiopia, it is common to eat from the same dish in the middle of the table with a group of people. It is also a common custom to feed others with one's own hands—a tradition referred to as gursha.[366] Traditional Ethiopian cuisine employs no pork, as it is forbidden in Ethiopian Orthodox Christian and Islamic faiths; Ethiopian Orthodox Christians also fast from meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, and the daysleading up to Easter and Christmas.[367]

Chechebsa, marqa, chukko, michirra, and dhanga are the most popular dishes from the Oromo people. Kitfo, which originated among the Gurage people, is one of the country's most popular delicacies. In addition, doro wat (Amharic: ዶሮ ወጥ) and tsebehi derho (Tigrinya: ጽብሒ ድርሆ), are other popular dishes, originating from northwestern Ethiopia.[368] Tihlo (ጥሕሎ), a type of dumpling prepared from roasted barley flour and originating from the Tigray Region, is now very popular in Amhara and spreading further south.[369]

Sport

Main article: Sport in Ethiopia

Abebe Bikila, Ethiopia's first Olympic gold medalist

The main sports in Ethiopia are track and field (particularly long distance running) and football. Ethiopian athletes have won many Olympic gold medals in track and field, most of them in long distance running.[370] Abebe Bikila became the first athlete from a Sub-Saharan country to win an Olympic gold medal when he won the Marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games in a world record time of 2:15:16.[371][372]

The Ethiopia national football team was one of four founding members of the Confederation of African Football and won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1962.[373] Ethiopia has Sub-Saharan Africa's longest basketball tradition as it established a national basketball team in 1949.[citation needed]

history of Ethiopia, a survey of notable events and people in the history of Ethiopia, from the prehistoric era to the present day. Ethiopia is the largest and most populated country in the Horn of Africa. It is also one of the world’s oldest countries (sometimes referred to as Abyssinia in previous historical periods), its territorial extent having varied over the millennia of its existence. In ancient times it remained centerd on Aksum, an imperial capital whose remains are located in the northern part of the modern state, about 100 miles (160 km) from the Red Sea coast. The present territory was consolidated during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia lies completely within the tropical latitudes. It is also landlocked, having become so following the 1993 secession of Eritrea, its former province along the Red Sea. Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa, lies near the center of the country.

From Ethiopia’s prehistory to the Aksumite kingdom

“Lucy”

“Lucy” “Lucy,” a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found by anthropologist Donald Johanson in 1974 at Hadar, Ethiopia.

That the human lineage is of great antiquity in Ethiopia is indicated by the Hadar remains, a group of skeletal fragments found in the lower Awash River valley. The bone fragments, thought to be 3.4 to 2.9 million years old, belong to Australopithecus afarensis, an apelike creature that may have been an ancestor of modern humans.

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Sometime between the 8th and 6th millennia bce, pastoralism and then agriculture developed in northern Africa and southwestern Asia, and, as the population grew, an ancient tongue spoken in this region fissured into the modern languages of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) family. This family includes the Cushitic, Semitic, and Omotic languages now spoken in Ethiopia. During the 2nd millennium bce, cereal grains and the use of the plow were introduced into Ethiopia, possibly from the region of the Sudan, and peoples speaking Geʿez (a Semitic language) came to dominate the rich northern highlands of Tigray. There, in the 7th century bce, they established the kingdom of Dʾmt (Daʾamat). This kingdom dominated lands to the west, obtaining ivory, tortoiseshell, rhinoceros horn, gold, silver, and slaves and trading them to South Arabian merchants.

Obelisk at Aksum

Obelisk at AksumAn obelisk from the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, in the modern town of the same name.

After 300 bce, Dʾmt deteriorated as trade routes were diverted eastward for easier access to coastal ports, and a number of smaller city-states arose in its place. Subsequent wars of aggrandizement led to unification under the inland state of Aksum, which, from its base on the Tigray Plateau, controlled the ivory trade into the Sudan, other trade routes leading farther inland to the south, and the port of Adulis on the Gulf of Zula. Aksum’s culture comprised Geʿez, written in a modified South Arabian alphabet, sculpture and architecture based on South Arabian prototypes, and an amalgam of local and Middle Eastern deities. Thus, evidence exists of a close cultural exchange between Aksum and the Arabian Peninsula, but the traditional scholarly view, that South Arabian immigrants actually peopled and created pre-Aksumite northern Ethiopia, is increasingly under siege. Nevertheless, the ancient cultural exchange across the Red Sea became enshrined in Ethiopian legend in the persons of Makeda—the Queen of Sheba—and the Israelite king Solomon. Their mythical union was said to have produced Menilek I, the progenitor of Ethiopia’s royal dynasty.

By the 5th century ce, Aksum was the dominant trading power in the Red Sea region. Commerce rested on sound financial methods, attested to by the minting of coins bearing the effigies of Aksumite emperors. In the anonymous Greek travel book Periplus Maris Erythraei, written in the 1st century ce, Adulis is described as an “open harbour” containing a settlement of Greco-Roman merchants. It was through such communities, established for the purposes of trade, that the Christianity of the eastern Mediterranean reached Ethiopia during the reign of the emperor Ezanas (c. 303–c. 350). By the mid-5th century, monks were evangelizing among the Cushitic-speaking Agau (Agaw, or Agew) people to the east and south. The Ethiopian church opted to follow the leadership of the Coptic church (in Alexandria, Egypt) in rejecting the Christology proposed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and breaking with the bishops of Rome and Constantinople (relations would not resume until the second half of the 20th century).

At its height, Aksum extended its influence westward to the kingdom of Meroe, southward toward the Omo River, and eastward to the spice coasts on the Gulf of Aden. Even the South Arabian kingdom of the Himyarites, across the Red Sea in what is now Yemen, came under the suzerainty of Aksum. In the early 6th century, the emperor Caleb (Ella-Asbeha; reigned c. 500–534) was strong enough to reach across the Red Sea in order to protect his coreligionists in Yemen against persecution by a Jewish prince. However, Christian power in South Arabia ended after 572, when the Persians invaded and disrupted trade. They were followed 30 years later by the Arabs, whose rise in the 7th and 8th centuries cut off Aksum’s trade with the Mediterranean world.

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The Zagwe and Solomonic dynasties

Bete Giyorgis (House of St. George)

Bete Giyorgis (House of St. George)Bete Giyorgis (House of St. George), one of the rock-hewn churches in Lalībela, Ethiopia, designated a World Heritage site in 1978.

As Christian shipping disappeared from the Red Sea, Aksum’s towns lost their vitality. The Aksumite state turned southward, conquering adjacent grain-rich highlands. Monastic establishments moved even farther to the south; for example, a major church was founded near Lake Hayk in the 9th century. Over time, one of the subject peoples, the Agau, learned Geʿez, became Christian, and assimilated their Aksumite oppressors to the point that Agau princes were able to transfer the seat of the empire southward to their own region of Lasta. Thus the Zagwe dynasty appeared in Ethiopia. Later ecclesiastical texts accused this dynasty of not having been of pure “Solomonic” stock (i.e., not being descended from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba), but it was in the religious plane that the Zagwe nonetheless distinguished themselves. At the Zagwe capital of Roha (modern-day Lalībela), the emperor Lalībela (reigned c. 1185–1225) directed the hewing of 11 churches out of living rock—a stupendous monument to Christianity, which he and the other Zagwes fostered along with the Ethiopianization of the countryside.

However, Zagwe hegemony was never complete, and opposition continued among the Semitic-speaking elite of Tigray, to the north, and the newly emergent Amhara people, to the south. The opposition increasingly focused on questions of “Solomonic” legitimacy. In 1270 a leading nobleman of the province of Shewa, Yekuno Amlak, rebelled. He was supported by an influential faction of monastic churchmen, who condoned his regicide of the emperor Yitbarek and legitimated his descent from Solomon. The genealogy of the new Solomonic dynasty was published in the early 14th century in the Kebra nagast (“Glory of the Kings”), a collection of legends that related the birth of Menilek I, associated Ethiopia with the Judeo-Christian tradition, and provided a basis for Ethiopian national unity through the Solomonic dynasty, Semitic culture, and the Amharic language. Well-armed ideologically, the Ethiopian state was prepared for a struggle impending in its eastern and southern provinces, where Christianity was meeting increasing resistance from the forces of Islam.

Islamic preaching had converted many of the people living on the peripheries of Ethiopian rule. In the late 13th century, various Muslim sultanates on Ethiopia’s southern border fell under the hegemony of Ifat, located on the eastern Shewan Plateau and in the Awash valley. The Ethiopian emperor Amda Tseyon proved a vigorous campaigner, waging wars in all directions—to the Red Sea in the north, unincorporated areas in the south, and eastward against the Muslim state of Ifat. He established strategic garrisons to consolidate the newly conquered regions, creating a system of gults, or fiefs, in which the holders of a gult were paid tribute by the gult’s inhabitants. His heavy taxation of exports, especially of gold, ivory, and enslaved people that were transshipped from Ifat to Arabia, met with resistance. Amda Tseyon and his successors replied with brutal pacification campaigns that carried Solomonic power into the Awash valley and even as far as Seylac (Zeila) on the Gulf of Aden.

Aggrandizement into non-Christian areas was accompanied by internal reform and consolidation of the Christian state. As heads of the church, the Solomonic monarchs actively participated in the development of religious culture and discipline by building and beautifying churches, repressing “pagan” practices, and promoting the composition of theological and doctrinal works. Nevertheless, the relations between church and state were marked by conflict as well as cooperation. The rise of the Shewan Solomonics had been preceded by a revival of monasticism in the Amhara areas, and the monks had an uneasy relationship with the new dynasty. The bolder ones among them condemned the dynasty’s practice of polygyny, and not until the late 14th century was the conflict resolved, the royal court having won over the monks with rich grants of land. Other conflicts also arose. The monk Ewostatewos (c. 1273–1352) preached isolation from corrupting state influences and a return to biblical teachings—including observance of the Judaic Sabbath on Saturday in addition to the Sunday observance, an idea apparently already widely diffused in Ethiopia. The great emperor Zara Yaqob (Zara Yakob; reigned 1434–68) conceded the latter point in 1450 at the Council of Debre Mitmaq, but he also initiated severe reforms in the church, eliminating abuses by strong measures and executing the leaders of heretical sects. In addition, Zara Yaqob conducted an unsuccessful military campaign against the Beta Israel, a group of Agau-speaking Jews who practiced a non-Talmudic form of Judaism.

Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī

Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-GhāzīStatue of the 16th-century Muslim leader Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī (also known as Sahib al-Fath and Aḥmad Grāñ), Mogadishu, Somalia.

Zara Yaqob valued national unity above all and feared Muslim encirclement. In 1445 he dealt Ifat such a crushing military defeat that hegemony over the Muslim states passed to the sultans of Adal, in the vicinity of Harer. About 1520 the leadership of Adal was assumed by Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī, a Muslim reformer who became known as Sahib al-Fath (“the Conqueror”) to the Muslims and Aḥmad Grāñ (“Ahmad the Left-Handed”) to the Christians. Aḥmad drilled his men in modern Ottoman tactics and led them on a jihad, or holy war, against Ethiopia, quickly taking areas on the periphery of Solomonic rule. In 1528 the emperor Lebna Denegel was defeated at the battle of Shimbra Kure, and the Muslims pushed northward into the central highlands, destroying settlements, churches, and monasteries. In 1541 the Portuguese, whose interests in the Red Sea were imperiled by Muslim power, sent 400 musketeers to train the Ethiopian army in European tactics. The emperor Galawdewos (reigned 1540–59) opted for a hit-and-run strategy and on February 21, 1543, caught Aḥmad in the open near Lake Tana and killed him in action. The Muslim army broke, leaving the field and north-central Ethiopia to the Christians.

Challenge, revival, and decline (16th–19th century)

Meanwhile, population pressures had mounted among the Oromo, a pastoral people who inhabited the upper basin of the Genalē (Jubba) River in what is now southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. Oromo society was based upon an “age-set” system known as gada, in which all males born into an eight-year generation moved together through all the stages of life. The warrior classes (luba) raided and rustled in order to prove themselves, and in the 16th century they began to undertake long-distance expeditions, availing themselves of the collapse of the frontier defenses of both the Christian and the Muslim states. By 1600 the Oromo had spread so widely in Ethiopia that the emperor Sarsa Dengel (reigned 1563–97) limited his government to what are now Eritrea, the northern regions of Tigray and Gonder, and parts of Gojam, Shewa, and Welo—areas that included the bulk of the Christian Semitic-speaking agriculturalists. Meanwhile, the church had barely revived following the destruction and mass apostasy of the jihad era, when it found itself facing a different kind of threat, from Roman Catholicism.

Following close upon the Portuguese musketeers were missionaries who, sent by the Jesuit founder St. Ignatius of Loyola, sought to convert Ethiopia to the Western church. The most successful of these was the Jesuit Pedro Páez. His personal authority and eminent qualities were such that the emperor Susenyos (reigned 1607–32) was persuaded to accept the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ and to notify the pope of his submission. This apostasy was joined by many in the royal court but met with violent resistance from the provincial nobles, the church, and the people at large. Susenyos was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Fasilides (reigned 1632–67).

Fasilides' castle in Gonder

Fasilides' castle in GonderFasilides' castle in Gonder, Ethiopia.

Fasilides established a new capital at Gonder, a trading center north of Lake Tana that connected the interior to the coast. At its height, about 1700, the city supported the arts and educational, religious, and social institutions as well as Beta Israel craftspeople, Muslim traders, and a large population of farmers, day laborers, students, and soldiers. Fasilides was succeeded by his son, Yohannes, and then by a grandson, Iyasu the Great. The court sponsored secular and religious construction, manuscript writing and copying, the verbal arts, and painting. A second wave of cultural productivity followed, in the middle decades of the 18th century, under the sponsorship of the empress Mentewwab (reigned 1730–69), a remarkable woman who ruled jointly with her son and grandson. However, ethnic, regional, and religious factionalism undermined the kingdom and led in 1769 to its collapse. The Zamana Masafent (“Age of the Princes”; 1769–1855), an era of feudal anarchy, had commenced.

For most Ethiopians, life during the Age of the Princes was difficult. Power had shifted from the central court to the courts of regional princes, and they vied with one another in battle. There were no significant changes in the social order, but the oppression of the farming population increased as armies traversed the highlands, ruining the countryside and plundering the harvests of farmers. Nevertheless, significant developments were taking place in the south.

Agricultural development in the Gībē River basin led to the formation of Oromo states to the southwest of Shewa; the Gonga people developed their own states in the Kefa highlands on the west bank of the Omo River; and a line that claimed Solomonic descent established a formidable regional kingdom in northern Shewa. Shewa prospered in the growing trade of the Gībē states, and Shewa’s self-proclaimed king, Sahle Selassie (reigned 1813–47), and his successors expanded southward; by 1840 they controlled most of Shewa to the Awash River and enjoyed suzerainty as far south as Guragē.

To the north, Kassa Hailu was in the process of ending the Age of the Princes. After serving as a mercenary in Gojam, Kassa returned to his native Qwara on the extreme edge of the western highlands, where he prospered as a highwayman and built a good small army. By 1847 he had monopolized the lowlands’ revenues from trade and smuggling, forcing Gonder’s leading magnates to integrate him into the establishment. Finally, in April 1853 at Takusa, Kassa defeated Ras (Prince) Ali, the last of a succession of the Oromo lords who had played a central role in the Age of the Princes. After defeating the ruler of northern Ethiopia, Kassa was crowned Emperor Tewodros II on February 11, 1855. Later that year he marched south and forced the submission of Shewa. His consolidation of power over the formerly separate states established the modern Ethiopian country.

Emergence of modern Ethiopia (1855–1916)

Tewodros II (1855–68)

Although Tewodros’s first years were marked by attempts at social reform, his effort to establish garrisons nationwide lost the allegiance of the already heavily taxed peasantry, and he alienated parish clergy by converting “excess” church land to military and secular tenure. Such measures gave heart to the regional aristocrats, who returned to rebellion. The emperor held Ethiopia together only through coercion. In 1861 he conceived a bold foreign policy to bolster his kingdom and promote his reforms. In 1862 Tewodros offered Britain’s Queen Victoria an alliance to destroy Islam. The British ignored the scheme, and, when no response came, Tewodros imprisoned the British envoy and other Europeans. This diplomatic incident led to an Anglo-Indian military expedition in 1868. Sir Robert Napier, the commander, paid money and weapons to Kassa, a dejazmatch (earl) of Tigray, in order to secure passage inland, and on April 10, on the plains below Āmba Maryam (or Mekʾdela), British troops defeated a small imperial force. In order to avoid capture, Tewodros committed suicide two days later.

Yohannes IV (1872–89)

After a period of conflict that saw the brief and self-proclaimed rule of Tekle Giorgis (1868–72), the Tigrayan Kassa took the imperial crown as Yohannes IV on January 21, 1872. After ejecting two Egyptian armies from the highlands of Eritrea in 1875–76, Yohannes moved south, forcing Shewa’s king Sahle Mariam to submit and to renounce imperial ambitions. Yohannes thus became the first Ethiopian emperor in 300 years to wield authority from Tigray south to Guragē. He then sought to oust the Egyptians from coastal Eritrea, where they remained after the Mahdists had largely taken over the Sudan, but he was unable to prevent Italy from disembarking troops at Mitsiwa (now Massawa) in February 1885. In order to weaken the emperor, Rome tried to buy Sahle Mariam’s cooperation with thousands of rifles. The Shewan king remained faithful to Yohannes but took the opportunity in January 1887 to incorporate Harer into his kingdom. Meanwhile, Yohannes repulsed Italian forays inland, and in 1889 he marched into the Sudan to avenge Mahdist attacks on Gonder. On March 9, 1889, with victory in his grasp, he was shot and killed at Metema.

Menilek II (1889–1913)

Sahle Mariam declared himself emperor of Ethiopia on March 25, taking the name Menilek II, and at Wichale (or Ucciali, as the Italians called it) in Wallo on May 2 he signed a treaty of amity and commerce granting Italy rule over Eritrea. The Italian version of Article XVII of the Treaty of Wichale made Rome the medium for Ethiopia’s foreign relations, whereas the Amharic text was noncommittal. Both texts agreed that, in the case of differences, the Amharic text was to prevail. Learning that Rome had used the mistranslation to claim a protectorate over all of Ethiopia, Menilek first sought a diplomatic solution. Meanwhile, during 1891–93 he sent expeditions south and east to obtain gold, ivory, musk, coffee, hides, and enslaved people to trade for modern weapons and munitions. In December 1895, after two years of good harvests had filled Ethiopia’s granaries, Menilek moved his army into Tigray.

Rome believed that as few as 35,000 soldiers could control Ethiopia, but it was proved wrong on March 1, 1896, at the Battle of Adwa, where Gen. Oreste Baratieri led 14,500 Italian troops on a poorly organized attack against Menilek’s well-armed host of some 100,000 fighters. The Italian lines crumbled, and at noon retreat was sounded. The emperor retired into Ethiopia to await negotiations, and on October 26, 1896, he signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, which abrogated the Treaty of Wichale.

Ethiopia, c. 1902

Ethiopia, c. 1902Map of northeastern Africa, with Ethiopia (as Abyssinia) shown in the lower right corner, as depicted in the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, published in 1902.

Menilek subsequently directed the Solomonic state into areas never before under its rule. Between 1896 and 1906 Ethiopia expanded to its present size, taking in the highlands, the key river systems, and a buffer of low-lying zones around the state’s central core. Revenues from the periphery were used to modernize the new capital of Addis Ababa, to open schools and hospitals, and to build communication networks. Menilek contracted with a French company to construct a railway between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, which thus spurred the exploitation of the country’s produce by foreign merchants in cooperation with the ruling elites.

Iyasu (1913–16)

Imperial partitions of eastern Africa, 1881–1925

As Menilek aged, he appointed a cabinet to act for his grandson and heir designate, Iyasu (Lij Yasu), a son of the Muslim Oromo ruler of Wallo. Upon the emperor’s death in 1913, Iyasu took power in his own right. Seeking a society free of religious and ethnic divisions, he removed many of Menilek’s governors and integrated Muslims into the administration, outraging Ethiopia’s Christian ruling class. During World War I, Iyasu dallied with Islam and with the Central Powers in the hope of regaining Eritrea and freeing himself still further from the dominance of the Shewan aristocrats. After the Allied powers formally protested, the Shewan aristocrats met, accused Iyasu of apostasy and subversion, and deposed him on September 27, 1916.

The rise and reign of Haile Selassie I (1916–74)

Regent and heir apparent

Iyasu was replaced by Menilek’s daughter, Zauditu. Since it was considered unseemly for a woman to serve in her own right, Ras Tafari, the son of Ras Makonnen and a cousin of Menilek, served as Zauditu’s regent and heir apparent. The prince developed the rudiments of a modern bureaucracy by recruiting the newly educated for government service. He also engineered Ethiopia’s entry into the League of Nations in 1923, reasoning that collective security would protect his country from aggression. To brighten Ethiopia’s external image, he hired foreign advisers for key departments and set about abolishing slavery—a process possibly helped by the stirrings in Ethiopia of a market economy.

By 1928, when Zauditu named Tafari king, the economy was booming, thanks mainly to the export of coffee. In the countryside, local officials built roads and improved communications, facilitating the penetration of traders and entrepreneurs. Ethiopians remained in charge of the economy, since Tafari forced foreigners to take local partners and maintained tight control over concessions.

Emperor

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia stands in an ornate ceremonial uniform beside a table with a crown

Haile Selassie IEthiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I posing in ceremonial uniform, c. 1930.

On April 1, 1930, Zauditu died, and Tafari declared himself emperor. He was crowned Haile Selassie I (“Power of the Trinity”; his baptismal name) on November 2. In July 1931 the emperor promulgated a constitution that enshrined as law his prerogative to delegate authority to an appointed and indirectly elected bicameral parliament, among other modern institutions. During 1931–34 Haile Selassie instituted projects for roads, schools, hospitals, communications, administration, and public services. The combined effect of these projects was to increase the country’s exposure to the world economy. By 1932, revenues were pouring into Addis Ababa from taxes applied to 25,000 tons of coffee exported each year.

Conflict with Italy

Italian soldiers in the Italo-Ethiopian War

Italian soldiers in the Italo-Ethiopian WarItalian soldiers being transported by truck during the Italo-Ethiopian War in Ethiopia.

Haile Selassie’s success persuaded Italy’s ruler Benito Mussolini to undertake a preemptive strike before Ethiopia grew too strong to oppose Italian ambitions in the Horn of Africa. After an Ethiopian patrol clashed with an Italian garrison at the Welwel oasis in the Ogaden in November–December 1934, Rome began seriously preparing for war. Haile Selassie continued to trust in the collective security promised by the League of Nations. Only on October 2, 1935, upon learning that Italian forces had crossed the frontier, did he order mobilization. During the subsequent seven-month Italo-Ethiopian War, the Italian command used air power and poison gas to separate, flank, and destroy Haile Selassie’s poorly equipped armies. The emperor went into exile on May 2, 1936.

For five years (1936–41) Ethiopia was joined to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to form Italian East Africa. During this period Italy carried out a program of public works, concentrating especially on highways and on agricultural and industrial development. Resistance to the occupation continued, however. The Italians dominated the cities, towns, and major caravan routes, while Ethiopian patriots harried the occupiers and sometimes tested the larger garrison towns. When Italy entered World War II in June 1940, the United Kingdom recognized Haile Selassie as a full ally, and the emperor was soon in Khartoum, Sudan, to help train a British-led Ethiopian army. This joint force entered Gojam on January 20, 1941, and encountered an enemy quick to surrender. On May 5 the emperor triumphantly returned to Addis Ababa. Defying the British occupation authorities, he quickly organized his own government.

Return to power

In February 1945 at a meeting with U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Haile Selassie submitted memoranda stressing the imperative for recovering Eritrea and thereby gaining free access to the sea. In 1948 and again in 1949 two commissions established by the wartime Allied powers and by the United Nations (UN) reported that Eritrea lacked national consciousness and an economy that could sustain independence. Washington, wishing to secure a communications base in Asmara (Asmera) and naval facilities in Massawa—and also to counter possible subversion in the region—supported Eritrea’s federation with Ethiopia. The union took place in September 1952.

During the 1950s Ethiopia’s coffee sold well in world markets. Revenues were used to centralize the government, to improve communications, to develop a national system of education based on the western model, and to modernize urban centers. In November 1955 the emperor promulgated a revised constitution, which permitted the parliament to authorize finances and taxes, to question ministers, and to disapprove imperial decrees. The constitution also introduced an elected lower house of parliament, a theoretically independent judiciary, separation of powers, a catalog of human rights, and a mandate for bureaucratic responsibility to the people. At the same time, the emperor retained his power of decree and his authority to appoint the government. Among his ministers, he subtly established competing power factions—a stratagem that had the ultimate effect of retarding governmental functioning and bureaucratic modernization.

Internal conflicts and the fall of the monarchy

Some officials concluded that the country would move ahead only when the imperial regime was destroyed. In December 1960, while the emperor was abroad, members of the security and military forces attempted a coup d’état. The coup rapidly unraveled, but not before the country’s social and economic problems had been described in radical terms. Even then, the emperor ignored the coup’s significance; in February 1961 he began to name a new government, which reflected the status quo ante by depending on the landowning military, aristocracy, and oligarchy for authority. Haile Selassie showed himself unable to implement significant land reform, and, as a result, progressives and students opposed the regime. The monarchy gradually lost its credibility, especially as it became embroiled in intractable conflicts in Eritrea and with Somalia.

Somalia’s independence in 1960 stimulated Somali nationalists in Ethiopia’s Ogaden to rebel in February 1963. When Somalia joined the fighting, the Ethiopian army and air force smashed its enemy. Somalia’s consequent military alliance with the Soviet Union upset the regional balance of power, driving up Ethiopia’s arms expenditures and necessitating more U.S. assistance. Meanwhile, an insurrection in Eritrea, which had begun in 1960 mainly among Muslim pastoralists in the western lowlands, came to attract highland Christians disaffected by the government’s dissolution of the federation in 1962 and the imposition of Amharic in the schools. At the same time, an increasingly radical student movement in Addis Ababa identified Haile Selassie as an agent of U.S. imperialism and his landowning oligarchs as the enemy of the people. Under the motto “Land to the tiller,” the students sought to limit property size and rights, and, by fostering debate on the issue of ethnicity, they confronted a problem marginalized by Haile Selassie. Some students espoused the Leninist notion that nationalities had the right to secede and, in so doing, gave strength and ideological justification to the Eritrean rebellion.

By the early 1970s one-third of Ethiopia’s 45,000 soldiers were in Eritrea, and others were putting down rebellions in Balē, Sīdamo, and Gojam. In January 1974 there began a series of mutinies led by junior officers and senior noncommissioned officers, who blamed the imperial elites for their impoverishment and for the country’s economic and social ills. For the government the situation was greatly worsened by drought and famine in the north, the denial of which became an international scandal. In June, representatives of the mutineers constituted themselves as the Coordinating Committee (Derg; also spelled Dergue) of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army. Maj. Mengistu Haile Mariam, of Harer’s 3rd Division, was elected chairman. The Derg proceeded to dismantle the monarchy’s institutions and to arrest Haile Selassie’s cronies, confidantes, and advisers. It then campaigned against the old and senile emperor, who was deposed on September 12, 1974. The Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC) was established. The PMAC was administered by the Derg and assumed the functions of government, with Lieut. Gen. Aman Andom as chairman and head of state and Mengistu as the first vice chairman. Tensions within the Derg soon fueled a power struggle and led to Bloody Saturday (November 23, 1974), when as many as 60 leaders, including Andom, were executed. Andom was replaced by Brig. Gen. Teferi Banti. The new government issued a Declaration of Socialism on December 20, 1974.

Socialist Ethiopia (1974–91)

The Derg borrowed its ideology from competing Marxist parties, all of which arose from the student movement. One of them, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), believed so strongly in civilian rule that it undertook urban guerrilla war against the military rulers, and anarchy ensued in the following years.

In February 1977 Mengistu (now a lieutenant colonel) survived a battle between his supporters and those of rivals on the PMAC. Banti and several other members were killed, and Mengistu seized complete power as chairman and head of state. A series of EPRP attacks against Derg members and their supporters, known as the White Terror, was countered by Mengistu’s Red Terror, a bloody campaign that crushed armed opponents among the EPRP and other groups, as well as members of the civilian populace. As a result of the campaign, which continued into 1978, thousands of Ethiopia’s best-educated and idealistic young people were killed or exiled; in all, as many as 100,000 people were killed, and thousands more were tortured or imprisoned.

Mengistu Haile Mariam

Mengistu Haile MariamEthiopian army officer and head of state Mengistu Haile Mariam delivering a speech in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 1977.

Meanwhile, in May and June 1977, Somalia’s army advanced into the Ogaden. The U.S.S.R. labeled Somalia the aggressor and diverted arms shipments to Ethiopia, where Soviet and allied troops trained and armed a People’s Militia, provided fighting men, and reequipped the army. Unable to entice the United States into resupplying its troops and faced with renewed Ethiopian military vigor, Somalia withdrew in early 1978. Mengistu quickly shifted troops to Eritrea, where by year’s end the Eritrean nationalists had been pushed back into mountainous terrain around Nakʾfa.

Land reform and famine

Mengistu sought to transform Ethiopia into a command state led by a disciplined and loyal party that would control all organs of authority. To this end, a land-reform proclamation of 1975 transferred ownership of all land to the state and provided allotments of no more than 25 acres (10 hectares) to individual peasants who farmed the land themselves. Extensive nationalization of industry, banking, insurance, large-scale trade, and urban land and extra dwellings completed the reforms and wiped out the economic base of the old ruling class. To implement the reforms, adjudicate disputes, and administer local affairs, peasants’ associations were organized in the countryside and precinct organizations (kebele) in the towns. In 1984 the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia was formed, with Mengistu as secretary-general, and in 1987 a new parliament inaugurated the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, with Mengistu as president.

Despite initial expectations, farmers failed to generate the high yields expected from the land reform, for there was little incentive for them to do so. Moreover, their plots were tiny, rendering the legal limit of 25 acres irrelevant. Holdings varied according to the country’s different regions, but overall probably averaged not much more than 3.7 acres (1.5 hectares). In order to feed Ethiopia’s cities and the army, the government tried to force the peasants’ associations to deliver grain at below-market prices, a measure that alienated the peasants and did nothing to stimulate production. Meanwhile, drought intensified yearly from 1980, building to a climax in 1984, when the small rains were scanty and the main rains failed altogether. Famine ensued, government controls having limited the mobility with which peasants had responded to previous shortfalls. Ideological suspicions precluded the West from responding to alarms that the Ethiopian government put forward in the spring of 1984 following the small rains, and its own preoccupation with celebrating its 10th anniversary and founding the Workers’ Party led the government to cover up the developing famine in the fall of that same year. With one-sixth of Ethiopia’s people at risk of starvation, Western countries made available enough surplus grain to end the crisis by mid-1985. Donors were not so forthcoming for a mammoth population-resettlement program that proposed to move people from the drought-prone and crowded north to the west and south, where supposedly surplus lands were available. The Mengistu regime handled the shift callously and did not have the necessary resources to provide proper housing, tools, medical treatment, or food for the 600,000 farming families it moved. Resources were also lacking for a related villagization program, which had the putative aim of concentrating scattered populations into villages where they might receive modern services. As late as 1990 most villages lacked the promised amenities, in part because of resource-draining civil strife in the north.

Challenges to the regime

By 1985–86 the government was embattled in most of Eritrea and Tigray, but Mengistu simply stepped up recruitment and asked the U.S.S.R. for more arms. In December 1987 the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) broke through the Ethiopian lines before Nakʾfa and waged increasingly successful war with weapons captured from demoralized government troops. In early 1988 the EPLF began to coordinate its attacks with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had long been fighting for the autonomy of Tigray and for the reconstitution of Ethiopia on the basis of ethnically autonomous regions. The Soviets refused to ship more arms, and in February 1989 a series of defeats and a worsening lack of weaponry forced the Ethiopian government to evacuate Tigray. The TPLF then organized the largely Amhara Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement. Together, these two groups formed the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and their forces easily advanced into Gonder and Welo provinces. The following year the EPLF occupied Massawa, which broke the Ethiopian stranglehold on supplies entering the country and demonstrated that the government no longer ruled in Tigray and Eritrea. Shortly thereafter, when the TPLF cut the Addis Ababa–Gonder road and put Gojam at risk, Mengistu announced the end of many of the regime’s most unpopular socialist measures.

The peasants immediately abandoned their new villages for their old homesteads, dismantled cooperatives, and redistributed land and capital goods. They ejected or ignored party and government functionaries, in several cases killing recalcitrant administrators. The regime was thus weakened in the countryside—not least in southern Ethiopia, where the long-dormant Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) became active. By May 1991, with EPRDF forces controlling Tigray, Welo, Gonder, Gojam, and about half of Shewa, it was obvious that the Ethiopian army did not have sufficient morale, manpower, weapons, munitions, and leadership to stop the rebels’ advance on Addis Ababa. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe, and on May 28 the EPRDF took power.

Ethiopian transition (1991–95)

The new government, led by a Tigrayan, the EPRDF chairman Meles Zenawi, claimed that it would democratize Ethiopia through recognition of the country’s ethnic heterogeneity. No longer would Ethiopia be maintained by force; rather, it would be a voluntary federation of its many peoples. To this end, the EPRDF and other political groups, including the OLF, agreed to the creation of a transitional government that would engineer a new constitution and elections, to a national charter that recognized an ethnic division of political power, and to the right of nationalities to secede from Ethiopia—thus paving the way for Eritrea’s legal independence, which became official on May 24, 1993.

The new regime began to lay the foundations for Ethiopia’s first federal administrative structure, the component units consisting of ostensibly ethnically homogeneous regions. There was little lessening of control from the center, however, as the ruling parties of the regional governments intimately affiliated politically and ideologically with the EPRDF. Many of the country’s elite feared that the regime was weakening the country’s unity. The Amhara, identified by the EPRDF as colonizers and unaccustomed to thinking of themselves as but one of the country’s many different ethnic groups, were particularly affronted by the apparent fragmentation of the country. The government fought back by denouncing Amhara leaders as antidemocratic chauvinists and by muzzling the press through the application of a new law, which, ironically, primarily served to end decades of systematic censorship under previous regimes but also established media regulations and penalties. In the provinces, the government did not bother to maintain even the guise of freedom: there the suppression of anti-EPRDF forces, especially the OLF, was so blatant as to be noticed by the members of an international team sent to observe hastily called regional elections in June 1992. The OLF left the government over the conduct of these elections and has been in increasingly armed opposition ever since.

Throughout 1992–93 the transitional government worked with donor governments and the World Bank to forge a structural-adjustment program. This program devalued the Ethiopian currency, sharply reduced government intervention in the economy, dictated redundancies in the civil service, and made it easier for foreign companies to invest in Ethiopia and repatriate their profits. However, the government refused to denationalize land, and foreign investment was slow to return. The economy grew modestly but experienced no structural transformations. Yet another famine, stemming from a lack of national integration and the stifling overregulation of business, and again accompanied by drought, was signaled in 1994. Millions of Ethiopians were put at risk, largely in the north and east. The government called upon the international donor community for help, but, by failing to find measures to stimulate agricultural production, Ethiopia remained unable to finance its own development and to create the surplus needed to relieve its own population. Meanwhile, population growth had reduced the size of the average Ethiopian farm to under 2.5 acres (1 hectare).

Harold G. Marcus Donald Edward Crummey

Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Political and economic reforms

In 1994 the EPRDF adopted Ethiopia’s third constitution in 40 years; it was promulgated in 1995, creating the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. This constitution enshrined the principles of regionalism and ethnic autonomy, devolving power to regional states, several of them coalitions of smaller ethnic groups. It also enshrined, for the first time as a constitutional principle, national ownership of land. The country’s first multiparty elections were also held in 1995, but they were boycotted by most opposition groups in protest against harassment, arrests, and other actions instigated by the EPRDF-led government. As a result, the multiethnic EPRDF easily retained control of the federal government and most of the regional states. Negasso Gidada, a Christian Oromo who had served as minister of information in the transitional government, became president, and Meles became prime minister. The ethnic balance of the country was reflected in the careful selection of members for the Council of Ministers.

The economic-reform efforts that had begun in 1991 were somewhat successful, as the economy showed improvement in the mid-1990s. However, some aspects of reform, such as privatization of state-owned enterprises, progressed slowly, and the government’s cautious approach to economic liberalization remained an obstacle for foreign investment, as did the issue of nationalized property, which continued to be a source of consternation.

War with Eritrea

In 1998 simmering border tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia erupted into war. At the heart of the dispute was some 250 square miles (640 square km) of land near Badme, but the conflict quickly spread to two other areas, Zela Ambesa and the important Eritrean port city of Assab. A cease-fire signed in June 2000 provided for a UN mission (United Nations Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia; UNMEE) to monitor the cease-fire and deploy troops in a buffer zone between the two countries while the border was being demarcated. A peace agreement signed in Algeria in December ended the conflict, although relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea remained tense, and UNMEE troops stayed to monitor the truce and supervise the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Eritrean territory. The Ethiopian government was not pleased with the border demarcation proposed in 2002, as the town of Badme was awarded to Eritrea, and Meles protested this decision. Discussions continued during the next few years. UNMEE troops remained until July 2008 but ultimately left with the issue of demarcation still unsettled.

Dissent, protests, and increasing oppression

Meanwhile, the EPRDF remained in power into the 2000s, although it was weakened by internal dissent in 2001 when the EPRDF’s TPLF faction split over the government’s anticorruption policies and Meles’s embrace of more-liberal economic policies. The TPLF members who opposed Meles were purged from the party and held under house arrest. President Negasso sided with the TPLF splinter group, and, as a result, he was ousted from the leadership of his own party, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO). He did, however, keep his position as federal president until his term was up in September 2001. He was succeeded by Girma Wolde-Giorgis, who, like Negasso, was an Oromo, although he was not affiliated with the OPDO. Against the backdrop of political infighting, drought and famine continued to periodically plague the country, particularly in 2003, when the crisis was exacerbated by widespread incidence of waterborne illnesses and a malaria epidemic.

A strong performance by opposition parties in the May 2005 elections greatly increased the number of seats they held in the legislature. The EPRDF remained in power but with less of a majority and amid questionable circumstances. Although the elections were initially found to have been generally credible, there were reports of voter intimidation and other problems, and allegations of irregularities from more than half the country’s electoral constituencies delayed the announcement of the results for eight weeks. Accusations of fraud, as well as the final outcome of the elections, led to considerable protests and demonstrations in Addis Ababa; ensuing clashes between protesters and security forces left more than three dozen people dead, hundreds injured, and 3,000 arrested. This was followed in November by additional rioting, which left dozens more dead. Some of the victorious opposition candidates refused to take their legislative seats, in protest against the questionable circumstances surrounding the elections and aftermath; some were arrested for “violent activities aimed at subverting the constitutional order.” Tensions continued into the next year, as thousands of Ethiopians—including activists, journalists, and other legislators—were detained across the country. However, many detainees were released periodically throughout 2006, often without having had any charges filed against them. In May 2006 the EPRDF reached an agreement with the two primary opposition political parties, which then took their seats in the legislature.

More than a decade after his ouster, former Derg ruler Mengistu and his legacy still weighed heavily in the Ethiopian consciousness. To the dismay of many, Mengistu continued to live in exile in Zimbabwe, despite the Ethiopian government’s repeated attempts since the 1990s to lobby for his extradition. Nevertheless, he was tried, in absentia, on charges of genocide for his role in the Red Terror campaign. In December 2006 he was found guilty, and the next year he was given a life sentence. Following a successful appeal from the prosecution, he was sentenced to death in May 2008.

Also in 2006, Ethiopia sent troops to neighboring Somalia to defend that country’s beleaguered transitional government against rebel forces, and in December Ethiopia began a coordinated air and ground war there. Ethiopian troops had withdrawn from the country by January 2009, although they remained close to the Ethiopian-Somali border in case future intervention was deemed necessary. The intervention in the Somali crisis heightened the existing tensions with Eritrea, which supported Somalia’s rebels.

General elections were held in Ethiopia in May 2010. With the memories of the protests, violence, and deaths that followed the 2005 general elections still fresh in the minds of many Ethiopians, the political climate prior to the 2010 elections was somewhat subdued, although not free of controversy. Opposition groups complained that they were not given as much media coverage as the ruling EPRDF and that the government was harassing some opposition leaders. Those claims were supported by some international observers, who noted that not all political groups participating in the elections were afforded the same campaigning opportunities. Some international observers also noted evidence of voter intimidation and violence, although it was not considered to be enough of a factor to affect the final outcome of the elections, which were held on May 23. The EPRDF was overwhelmingly victorious in securing the majority of legislative seats, allowing Meles to remain prime minister. International observers deemed the electoral process to have been organized and largely peaceful overall, yet some also noted that it had not quite met international standards.

Meles’s health became the target of speculation in mid-2012, after he was conspicuously absent from the public eye. After weeks of such speculation, the government issued a comment in July, noting that Meles was doing well as he recuperated from an illness, which was not disclosed. Meles died on August 20, 2012, while he was abroad for medical treatment. He was succeeded by the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, Hailemariam Desalegn.

The next year saw the regularly scheduled end of Girma’s second presidential term. On October 7, 2013, the parliament elected veteran diplomat Mulatu Teshome Wirtu to succeed him. Prior to his election as president, Mulatu had served as ambassador to Turkey since 2006. He had held other ambassadorships and ministerial posts as well.

Although Ethiopia had seen considerable economic growth under EPRDF rule—the country’s economy was among the fastest growing in the world—that was contrasted by a worsening human rights record. In 2009 a harsh antiterrorism law had been passed, and in the following years it was one of the tools the EPRDF-led government used to suppress dissent. Numerous journalists and opposition activists were arrested, many of whom were charged with having violated that law; many others fled the country. In 2011 the government declared that two armed opposition groups as well as an opposition movement, Ginbot 7, were terrorist organizations and banned them, which led to a slew of arrests and antiterrorism charges against those accused of having interviewed or otherwise interacted with members of the proscribed groups. Prominent among those charged under the antiterrorism law was journalist Eskinder Nega, who was arrested in 2011 and later sentenced to 18 years in prison.

As the May 2015 general election approached, opposition groups complained of harassment by the government. The government was also criticized for stifling the independent media and preventing any meaningful political discourse prior to the election. The ruling EPRDF and its affiliates won every legislative seat in the May 24 vote, and on October 5 Hailemariam was unanimously reelected prime minister by the lower legislative house.

Meanwhile, a highly controversial plan by the government to expand Addis Ababa by linking it with areas in the neighboring Oromia region generated months of protest by the Oromo people in 2015; the plan was abandoned in January 2016. More protests occurred in 2016—primarily in the Oromia and Amhara regional states and, to a lesser extent, in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ region—fueled by issues such as the government’s questionable detentions of activists and journalists, feelings of political marginalization, and general discontent with the government. Security forces often responded harshly to protests and demonstrations, killing or wounding some of the protesters and arbitrarily arresting thousands more, which elicited condemnation from human rights groups. In October 2016 the government declared a state of emergency, which it did not rescind until August 2017.

Winds of change

In early 2018 the government surprised many by releasing thousands of prisoners, including Eskinder as well as other well-known individuals who had been detained for speaking out against the current administration. The government also announced that it was closing a notorious detention center. The moves were intended to ease tensions and allow for political dialogue between the government and the opposition. Those events were followed by the equally surprising resignation of Hailemariam, which he announced on February 15, 2018; he agreed to stay on until a new prime minister could be appointed. Hailemariam stated that he hoped his resignation would help usher in political reform. The next day the government declared another state of emergency; it was expected to last six months and was intended to limit the ongoing unrest. On March 25 Eskinder and several other journalists and activists who had been recently released from prison were rearrested, allegedly for holding a gathering in violation of the declared state of emergency and having an older, prohibited version of the country’s flag.

Abiy Ahmed

Abiy AhmedAbiy Ahmed, 2018.

The ruling EPRDF selected a successor to Hailemariam in late March. Abiy Ahmed, of the Oromo ethnic group, was first elected as chair of the ruling coalition on March 27, and he was then elected as prime minister by the lower legislative house on April 2 and was sworn in on the same day. Abiy was the first Oromo to hold the position of prime minister, and it was hoped that his ascent to the post would help calm the ongoing tensions between that group and the government. In his inaugural address, Abiy promised to improve conditions in the country, including strengthening the democratic process, fighting corruption, and growing the economy. He also vowed to work toward resolving the long-standing conflict with Eritrea.

In the months after his inauguration, Abiy quickly made efforts to fulfill his vows. Domestically, thousands more political prisoners were pardoned and released, including Eskinder and prominent opposition leader Andargachew Tsige. The government lifted its latest state of emergency ahead of schedule, on June 5. It also removed Ginbot 7, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), and the OLF from its list of organizations deemed to be terrorist groups. In August the ONLF declared a cease-fire, and in October the government and the group signed a peace agreement that was intended to end the hostilities that had plagued the Ogaden region for more than 30 years. On the economic front, Abiy announced that the government would allow for some degree of privatization of some state-owned industries, such as the national airlines and the country’s telecommunications provider, in an effort to encourage domestic and foreign investment and to spur economic growth. The new developments as well as the pace at which they were being unveiled surprised Ethiopians and the international community alike.

Perhaps nothing was as astonishing as the efforts of Abiy and the EPRDF-led government to achieve peace with Eritrea and the swiftness with which they moved. On June 5 Abiy announced that Ethiopia would finally honor the terms of the 2000 peace agreement that was meant to end its war with Eritrea. The agreement’s terms included accepting and implementing the controversial 2002 ruling that demarcated the border between the two countries. That announcement led to a flurry of diplomatic overtures, and in early July Abiy and Eritrean Pres. Isaias Afwerki met in Eritrea. The two agreed to reopen their borders and reestablish ties between the two countries in the areas of diplomacy, trade, communications, and transportation. Most stunning was the joint statement from Abiy and Isaias on July 9 announcing that the state of war that had existed between their two countries for 20 years had come to an end.

Abiy formed a new cabinet in October 2018. It was notable not only for its smaller size—Abiy cut the number of posts in the cabinet from 28 to 20—but, more strikingly, for Abiy’s appointment of women to half of the positions, providing the country with its first gender-balanced cabinet. Later that month President Mulatu resigned before the end of his six-year term, paving the way for a new president to be selected by lawmakers. On October 25 the parliament elected Sahle-Work Zewde to succeed him; she was sworn in the same day, becoming the first woman to serve as president of Ethiopia. Sahle-Work was an accomplished diplomat who had served as an ambassador for Ethiopia and had held several positions with the United Nations.

In October 2019 Abiy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Nobel Committee highlighted his actions in resolving Ethiopia’s long-running border dispute with Eritrea as an example of his efforts to attain peace.

In November 2019 the Sidamo people held a referendum to determine if there was enough support to create a new ethnic-based regional state for themselves, an option provided to all ethnic groups under the country’s constitution. The referendum passed, with more than 98 percent of Sidamo voters supporting the measure.

Challenges, ethnic tensions, and the Tigrayan conflict

Abiy’s reforms and changes, while welcomed and lauded by many in Ethiopia and abroad, were criticized by others for their scope and the speed at which they occurred. One of the consequences of the loosening of restrictions was that existing ethnic tensions that had been held to a simmer under the previous administration could now rise to the surface, the repercussions of which were sometimes violent, as were the actions of some who felt threatened by the rapid reforms. In June 2018, shortly after Abiy took office, a grenade was detonated near him at a rally; while he was not hurt, two others were killed and many more injured. A year later several high-ranking officials were killed in what the government alleged was a failed coup attempt in the Amhara regional state. The murder in June 2020 of Oromo activist and songwriter Hachalu Hundessa, presumed by many to have been politically motivated. sparked weeks of protests and ethnic violence that led to more than 280 deaths.

Abiy’s reforms also had the effect of sidelining the TPLF—despite Tigrayans’ constituting less than 10 percent of the country’s population, the TPLF had previously been the dominant member of the ruling EPRDF coalition—and led to growing resentment from that party. Furthermore, many Tigrayan officials and military officers were caught in a crackdown on corruption during Abiy’s administration.