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]} Afro-Asiatic speaking people attested by their settlement in the Nile Valley during Neolithic age.^[24] In the 1st century, the Kingdom of Aksum emerged as a great power in what is now northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, and eastern Sudan. During this time, a strong assimilating culture for an Ethiopian national identity flourished; Aksum allowed Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity to serve state religion and introduced Islam in early 7th century whilst providing asylum for Muslims.^[25] Aksum suffered from recurring external sieges in the Early Middle Ages and collapsed in the early 10th century when a female pagan ruler Gudit conducted a raid.^[26] The remnant of Aksum fled southward and formed the Zagwe dynasty, ruling for over three centuries.

In 1270, Yekuno Amlak formed the Ethiopian Empire and Solomonic dynasty, who claimed it descended from Biblical Solomon and Queen of Sheba under their child Menelik I early in 10th century BC. By the 13th century, the empire territory gradually expand to southward, facing religious encounters with Muslim states at that time, culminating in the Ethiopian–Adal War in 1529, with ending 13 years until the Ethiopian Empire recaptured its lost vassal state. In mid-18th century, Ethiopia experienced decentralization known as Zemene Mesafint. It lasted at the reign of Emperor Tewodros II in 1855, bringing Ethiopia to reunification and modernization.^[27]

Several conquests were attempted in the late 19th century from prominent countries such as Egypt and Italy; eventually, Ethiopia and Liberia became the only independent African nations from European powers during the Scramble for Africa. The Treaty of Addis Ababa (1896) ratified the sovereignty of Ethiopia, allowing an extensive conquest of remaining kingdoms by Emperor Menelik II that would ended with modern border of Ethiopia.^[28][29][30] Ethiopia then admitted the League of Nations and United Nations. During the interwar period in 1935, Ethiopia was occupied by Fascist Italian force and annexed to former colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland, later forming Italian East Africa; it was soon liberated by British armies in 1941 of Second World War, and entered short period of British military administration.

Rapid modernization transformed the country under Emperor Haile Selassie until he was deposed from 1974 revolutionary coup of the Derg, a military junta backed by the Soviet Union. Much of its history, the Derg initiated civil war, embraced by violent repression, famine and revolt waged by Tigray-Eritrean separatist rebels, until overthrown by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 1991. Under EPRDF-coalition government, led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), Ethiopia's politics has been liberalized; conversely, Ethiopia became an ethnofederalist state, while the government frequently criticized as authoritarian. Thereafter, the country suffered from prolong unsolved civil and ethnic conflicts and series political instability marked by democratic backsliding over successive periods.^[31][32]