Since , Ethiopia is has been divided into nine ethnically-based and politically autonomous regional states kililoch , singular kilil and two chartered cities astedader akababiwoch , singular astedader akababi , the latter being Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa subdivisions 1 and 5 in the map, respectively.
The kililoch are subdivided into sixty-eight zones, and then further into woredas and several special woredas. The constitution assigns extensive power to regional states that can establish their own government and democracy according to the federal government's constitution. Each region has at its apex a regional council where members are directly elected to represent the districts and the council has legislative and executive power to direct internal affairs of the regions.
Article 39 of the Ethiopian Constitution further gives every regional state the right to secede from Ethiopia. There is debate, however, as to how much of the power guaranteed in the constitution is actually given to the states.
The councils implement their mandate through an executive committee and regional sectoral bureaus. Such elaborate structure of council, executive, and sectoral public institutions is replicated to the next level woreda.
At , square miles 1,, km 2 , Ethiopia is the world's 27th-largest country. It is comparable in size to Bolivia. The major portion of Ethiopia lies on the Horn of Africa, which is the easternmost part of the African landmass. 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.
The great diversity of terrain determines 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 a large number of endemic species, notably the Gelada Baboon, the Walia Ibex and the Ethiopian wolf or Simien fox. The wide range of altitude has given the country a variety of ecologically distinct areas, this has helped to encourage the evolution of endemic species in ecological isolation.
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,—2, m 6,—8, 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, m 7, ft , and experiences a healthy and pleasant climate year round.
With fairly uniform year round temperatures, the seasons in Addis Ababa are largely defined by rainfall, with a dry season from October—February, a light rainy season from March—May, and a heavy rainy season from June—September. The average annual rainfall is around 1, mm 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.
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 the country, the climate can be significantly hotter and drier.
Ethiopia has 31 endemic species of mammals. The African Wild Dog prehistorically had widespread distribution in the territory. However, with last sightings at Fincha, this canid is thought to be potentially extirpated within Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Wolf is perhaps the most researched of all the endangered species within Ethiopia.
Historically, throughout the African continent, wildlife populations have been rapidly declining owing to logging, civil wars, pollution, poaching and other human interference.
A year-long civil war along with severe drought, negatively impacted Ethiopia's environmental conditions leading to even greater habitat degradation. 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 gas emissions. Ethiopia has a large number of species listed as critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable to global extinction.
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. Ethiopia is one of the seven fundamental and independent centers of origin of cultivated plants of the world. Current government programs to control deforestation consist of education, promoting reforestation programs and providing alternate raw material 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.
Organizations such as SOS and Farm Africa are working with the federal government and local governments to create a system of forest management. Working with a grant of approximately 2. This project is assisting more than 80 communities.
Ethiopia was the fastest-growing non-oil-dependent African economy in the years and 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. There have been efforts for reform since , but the scope of reform is modest. Agricultural productivity remains low, and frequent droughts still beset the country.
Despite these economic improvements, urban and rural poverty remains an issue in the country. Ethiopia is often ironically referred to as the "water tower" of Eastern Africa because of the many 14 major rivers that pour off the high tableland, including the Nile. It also has the greatest water reserves in Africa, but few irrigation systems in place to use it.
Provision of telecommunications services is left to a state-owned monopoly. It is the view of the current government that maintaining state ownership in this vital sector is essential to ensure that telecommunication infrastructures and services are extended to rural Ethiopia, which would not be attractive to private enterprises.
The Ethiopian constitution defines the right to own land as belonging only to "the state and the people", but citizens may only lease land up to 99 years , and are unable to mortgage or sell. Renting of land for a maximum of twenty years is allowed and this is expected to ensure that land goes to the most productive user. 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, pulses e. Recently, Ethiopia has had a fast-growing annual GDP and it was the fastest-growing non-oil-dependent African nation in Exports are almost entirely agricultural commodities, and coffee is the largest foreign exchange earner. Ethiopia is Africa's second biggest maize producer. The life expectancy of men is reported to be 56 years and for women 60 years.
Ethiopia is also the 10th largest producer of livestock in the world. 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.
Cross-border trade by pastoralists is often informal and beyond state control and regulation. This trade helps lower food prices, increase food security, relieve border tensions and promote regional integration. However, there are also risks as 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.
Recent initiatives have sought to document and regulate this trade. With the private sector growing slowly, designer leather products like bags are becoming a big export business, with Taytu becoming the first luxury designer label in the country. 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 neighbors.
However, coffee remains its most important export product and with new trademark deals around the world, including recent deals with Starbucks, the country plans to increase its revenue from coffee. Most regard Ethiopia's large water resources and potential as its "white oil" and its coffee resources as "black gold".
The country also has large mineral resources and oil potential in some of the less inhabited regions. Political instability in those regions, however, has inhibited development. Ethiopian geologists were implicated in a major gold swindle in Four chemists and geologists from the Ethiopian Geological Survey were arrested in connection with a fake gold scandal, following complaints from buyers in South Africa.
At present the railway is under joint control of Djibouti and Ethiopia, but negotiations are underway to privatize this transport utility. As the first part of a year Road Sector Development Program, between and the Ethiopian government began a sustained effort to improve its infrastructure of roads.
As a result, as of Ethiopia has a total Federal and Regional 33, km of roads, both paved and gravel. Ethiopia's population has grown from The population was only about 9 million in the 19th century.
The Population and Housing Census results show that the population of Ethiopia grew at an average annual rate of 2. Currently, the population growth rate is among the top ten countries in the world. The population is forecast to grow to over million by , which would be an increase from estimates by a factor of about 2.
The country's population is highly diverse, containing over 80 different ethnic groups. The latter include the Oromo, Amhara, Tigray and Somali, who together make up three-quarters of the population.
Ethiopians and Eritreans, especially Semitic-speaking ones, collectively refer to themselves as Habesha or Abesha , though others reject these names on the basis that they refer only to certain ethnicities.
The Arabic form of this term Al-Habasha is the etymological basis of "Abyssinia," the former name of Ethiopia in English and other European languages.
Nilo-Saharan-speaking Nilotic ethnic minorities also inhabit the southern regions of the country, particularly in areas bordering South Sudan. Among these are the Mursi and Anuak. According to the Ethiopian national census of , the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, at The Amhara represent Other prominent ethnic groups are as follows: Sidama 4.
In , Ethiopia hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately , The majority of this population came from Somalia approximately 64, persons , Eritrea 41, and Sudan 25, The Ethiopian government required nearly all refugees to live in refugee camps.
According to Ethnologue, there are 90 individual languages spoken in Ethiopia. Most belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family, mainly of the Cushitic and Semitic branches.
Languages from the Nilo-Saharan phylum are also spoken by the nation's Nilotic ethnic minorities. English is the most widely spoken foreign language and is the medium of instruction in secondary schools. Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by regional languages such as Somali, Oromifa and Tigrinya.
Used as an abugida for several of the country's languages, it first came into use in the 5th—6th centuries BC as an abjad to transcribe the Semitic Ge'ez language. Ge'ez now serves as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Other writing systems have also been used over the years by different Ethiopian communities. The latter include Sheikh Bakri Sapalo's script for Oromo. Ethiopia has close historical ties with all three of the world's major Abrahamic religions.
It was one of the first areas of the world to have officially adopted Christianity as the state religion, in the 4th century. It still has a Christian majority, with over a third of the population Muslim. Until the s, a substantial population of Ethiopian Jews resided in Ethiopia.
According to the National Census, Christians make up According to the latest CIA factbook figure Muslims constitute The Kingdom of Aksum was one of the first nations to officially accept Christianity, when St. Many believe that the Gospel had entered Ethiopia even earlier, with the royal official described as being baptized by Philip the Evangelist in chapter eight of the Acts of the Apostles.
Acts —39 Today, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, part of Oriental Orthodoxy, is by far the largest denomination, though a number of Protestant Pentay churches and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tehadeso Church have recently gained ground.
Islam in Ethiopia dates back to the founding of the religion; in , when a group of Muslims were counseled by Muhammad to escape persecution in Mecca and travel to Ethiopia via modern day Eritrea, which was ruled by Ashama ibn Abjar, a pious Christian king. Moreover, Bilal ibn Ribah, the first Muezzin, the person chosen to call the faithful to prayer, and one of the foremost companions of Muhammad, was from Abyssinia Eritrea, Ethiopia etc.
Also, the largest single ethnic group of non-Arab Companions of Muhammad was that of the Ethiopians. A small ancient group of Jews, the Beta Israel, live in northwestern Ethiopia, though most emigrated to Israel in the last decades of the 20th century as part of the rescue missions undertaken by the Israeli government, Operation Moses and Operation Solomon. There are numerous indigenous African religions in Ethiopia, mainly located in the far southwest and western borderlands. In general, most of the largely members of the non-Chalcedonian Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Christians live in the highlands, while Muslims and adherents of traditional African religions tend to inhabit more lowland regions in the east and south of the country.
Ethiopia has several local calendars. The most widely known is the Ethiopian calendar, also known as the Ge'ez calendar. It is based on the older Alexandrian or Coptic calendar, which in turn derives from the Egyptian calendar. However, like the Julian calendar, the Ethiopian calendar adds a leap day every four years without exception, and begins the year on 29 August or 30 August in the Julian calendar. A seven to eight-year gap between the Ethiopian and Gregorian calendars results from alternate calculations.
Another prominent calendar system was developed by the Oromo around BC. A lunar-stellar calendar, it relies on astronomical observations of the moon in conjunction with seven particular stars or constellations. Population growth, migration, and urbanization are all straining both governments' and ecosystems' capacity to provide people with basic services. Urbanization has steadily been increasing in Ethiopia, with two periods of significantly rapid growth.
Meles Zenawi establishes stability and achieves considerable economic progress in his year authoritarian rule. Ends state of war with Eritrea. Ethiopian Foreign Ministry. UN news about Ethiopia. International Crisis Group. President: Sahle-Work Zewde. Ms Sahle-Work is the first female head of state since Empress Zawditu Image source, Getty Images.
Image source, AFP. The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela are thought to have been built in the 11th and 12th century. Read full timeline. This was also the time when Italy first tried to invade Ethiopia, however, was defeated by Menelik's forces at Adwa on 1 March In , Italy invaded Ethiopia until , thus ending the independency of the only African country with the exception of Liberia. The very same year, the disposed Ethiopia ruler, Emperor Haile Selassie regained his throne.
Sylvia Pankhurst was the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, a champion of woman suffrage who became active in the late 's. In , Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie invited her to live in Ethiopia, and she accepted the invitation. Although in her 70's, she founded the Ethiopia Observer and edited the paper for four years. She died on September 27, , in Addis Ababa, at the age of She was given a state funeral by the Ethiopian government in recognition of her service to the country. A group called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front seized the capital in , and in May a separatist guerrilla organization, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, took control of the province of Eritrea.
The two groups agreed that Eritrea would have an internationally supervised referendum on independence. A border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea broke out in when Eritrean forces occupied disputed territory. Despite work toward reforming the nation's agriculture, continues to face problems of famine and widespread poverty.
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