Ethiopia

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea and Djibouti to the north, Somalia to the east and northeast, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west, and Sudan to the northwest. Ethiopia has a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi). It is home to 117 million inhabitants and is the 12th-most populous country in the world and the 2nd-most populous in Africa after Nigeria.^[15][16][17] The national capital and largest city, Addis Ababa, lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African and Somali tectonic plates.^[18]

Anatomically modern humans emerged from modern-day Ethiopia and set out to the Near East and elsewhere in the Middle Paleolithic period.^{[19][20][21][22][23]} Ethiopia has a long history, tracing back to the first millennium BC. Two kingdoms were established during antiquity: the Kingdom of Dʿmt and Kingdom of Aksum; the latter's civilization was considered a great power by the third century AD. Christianity reached Aksum in the 4th century and has been the state religion since; Islam was introduced in Ethiopia in the seventh century. After the collapse of Aksum in the 10th century, a variety of kingdoms existed in the area that would later be known as Ethiopia. The Zagwe dynasty ruled the northern-central part of Ethiopia and Eritrea for over three centuries until being overthrown by Yekuno Amlak, who- inaugurated the Ethiopian Empire and its Solomonic line dynasty in 1270; this dynasty claimed descent from Biblical Solomon and the Queen of Sheba under their son Menelik I. By the 14th century, the empire grew its prestige through territorial expansion.^[24] In the mid-18th century, Ethiopia experienced decentralization known as the Zemene Mesafint. In 1855, the reign of Emperor Tewodros II brought reunification and modernization to Ethiopia. During the Scramble for Africa, Ethiopia was the only African country to secure its sovereignty from European colonial powers; it defeated Italy in 1896 and entered into the Treaty of Addis Ababa. From 1878 to 1904, Emperor Menelik II launched a series of conquests, consolidating Ethiopia's modern borders.

Ethiopia was occupied by Fascist Italian forces in 1935 and was merged with Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to become Italian East Africa. In 1941, it was liberated by the British army and an Arbegnoch guerrilla unit during the Second World War. The Derg, a Soviet-backed communist military junta, took power in 1974 after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie and the Solomonic dynasty. The Derg ruled the country for nearly 17 years; during this period, the nation experiencedcivil war, bloody repression, famine, an insurgency of Tigray-Eritrean separatist rebels, and Ethiopian–Somali conflict. After defeating the Derg, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) dominated the country, bringing with it a new constitution and ethnic-based federalism. Thereafter, Ethiopia endured prolonged and unsolved inter-ethnic tensions and clashes and political instability marked by democratic backsliding.