Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a landlocked country on the Horn of Africa. Meaning “New Flowers”, the capital of the country is Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Simien Mountains National Park, which provides a sanctuary for several endangered species.

Ethiopia’s climate is tropical in the south-east and north-east lowland areas with an average temperature of 26°C, and cooler in the highland region in the central part of the country with an average temperature of 16°C. Due to the effects of climate change, temperatures across Ethiopia have been increasing significantly by 1.3°C per decade since the 1990s. This increase has had and continues to have a negative societal, economic and geographical impact on Ethiopia due to asset losses through landscape and natural resource degradation and decreases in livestock.

Economy

Agriculture including crop and livestock production plays a dominant role in Ethiopia’s economy. Contributing to almost half of the country’s gross domestic product, agricultural activity is conducted by 70% of the workforce and produces the majority of Ethiopia’s exports.

Coffee, which is native to Ethiopia, is the country’s most important export. Other exported products include khat, hides and skins, live animals, oilseeds and gold. The main imports are machinery and transport equipment, chemical products, food products and fuels. Saudi Arabia, China and the United States of America are Ethiopia’s most significant trading partners.

Despite being one of the fastest growing modern economies in Africa, Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the continent and the world.

Ethnic groups and languages

Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest countries and is an important site in the study of the origin of humans. Anthropologists and historians have found that hominids were present in the country around 4 million years ago and the existence of anatomically modern humans in Ethiopia has been traced back to around 200,000 years ago.

With a population of 132.1 million (as of 2024), Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa after Nigeria. Two-thirds of the population live in the highland areas of the country. Ethiopians are ethnically diverse and speak around 100 languages.

All Ethiopian languages have official state recognition, however Amharic and Oromo are the two most widely spoken languages in the country. The vast majority of languages belong to the Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic groups, all part of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Semitic languages including Geʿez, Tigrinya, Amharic, Gurage and Hareri are the primary dialect in the northern and central parts of Ethiopia. The most prominent Cushitic languages are Oromo, Somali and Afar. Oromo is spoken in the western, southwestern, southern and eastern areas of the country. Somali is the primary language of inhabitants of the Ogaden and Hawd, while Afar is most common in the Denakil Plain. The rarest languages belong to the Omotic group including Woylatta which are mainly adopted in the populated areas of the extreme southwest. Native to inhabitants of the Western Lowlands, a small number of languages belong to the Nilotic group which is part of the Nilo-Saharan language family.

Religion

Christianity was introduced to Ethiopia in the fourth century as the state religion of the Kingdom of Aksum and remained the official religion of the ruling elite until the demise of the Ethiopian Empire in 1974. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is one of the world’s oldest Christian denominations. Christianity remains the largest religion in Ethiopia, followed by more than two-fifths of the population.

Introduced in the seventh century, Islam is Ethiopia’s second most observed religion with about one-third of the population identifying as Muslim. Some Ethiopians, predominantly speakers of Nilotic languages such as the Kunama people, follow animist beliefs and worship a variety of African deities.

Colonisation and Independence

Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country. Having never been colonised, the country was a symbol of African independence throughout the continent’s colonial period. After World War II, alongside being a founding member of the United Nations, Ethiopia provided material support to the decolonisation of Africa and growth of Pan-African cooperation, helping to establish the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in 1958 and the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 (now known as the African Union), both of which have their headquarters in Addis Ababa.

Despite Ethiopia avoiding European colonisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the country was subject to two invasions by Italy. The first was in 1896, however Italian forces were swiftly defeated by Ethiopians in two days of conflict known as the Battle of Adwa. In May 1936, Benito Mussolini’s Italy successfully annexed Ethiopia, leading to a five-year military occupation. This was brought to an end in November 1941 by Ethiopian soldiers with the assistance of the British and Commonwealth war liberation forces.

Academics have argued that even though Ethiopia was never colonised by a foreign state, the country experienced in the twentieth century what is referred to as self-colonisation. In 1930, Emperor Halle Selassie introduced a written constitution that began a process of modernisation in Ethiopia, leading the country particularly after World War II to widely adopt Western concepts, ideals and values. This dramatically transformed Ethiopia’s political and governance structures, economic activity, cultural practices and educational institutions, displacing traditional structures and cultures. Due to this process of radical westernisation, academics argue that Ethiopia experienced the oppressive effects of and developmental challenges associated with colonisation.

References

“Ethiopia country profile”, BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13349398 (Accessed: 25 February 2026).

Crummey, D. (2026) “Ethiopia”, Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/place/Ethiopia (Accessed: 26 February 2026).

Shitarek, T. (2012) “Ethiopia Country Report”, UK Government. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7b5a5ee5274a319e77eb82/Econ-Res-Ethiopia-Country-Report.pdf (Accessed: 27 February 2026).

“Ethiopia”, World Bank Group. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/country/ethiopia (Accessed: 25 February 2026).

“Country profile: Ethiopia”, World Vision. Available at: https://www.worldvision.com.au/docs/default-source/school-resources/ethiopia-country-profile.pdf?sfvrsn=eb662093_0 (Accessed: 27 February 2026).