Ethiopiaኢትዮጵያ

The highlands have been farmed for millennia, and the fossil record goes back much further: Lucy, a 3.2-million-year-old hominin skeleton, was found in the Afar lowlands in 1974. The first great state was Aksum, in today's Tigray, which from the first century AD traded ivory and gold through the Red Sea port of Adulis, minted its own coins and raised granite stelae over royal tombs. In the fourth century King Ezana adopted Christianity, making Aksum one of the first Christian kingdoms.

After Aksum faded, power moved south. The Zagwe dynasty of the 12th and 13th centuries carved the churches of Lalibela straight down into volcanic rock. In 1270 a new line claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba through their son Menelik I, and that Solomonic claim framed the monarchy until 1974. Emperors ruled from moving tent camps for centuries, until Fasiladas founded Gondar in 1636 and built the castles that still stand there.

The 16th century brought a near collapse: the Adal sultanate under Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, known as Gragn, overran much of the highlands before Portuguese musketeers helped the emperor recover. The 18th and early 19th centuries were the Zemene Mesafint, the 'era of the princes', when regional lords held real power. Tewodros II began to reunite the empire in 1855, Yohannes IV continued, and Menelik II, from Shewa, expanded it south and east and founded Addis Ababa in 1886.

In 1896 Menelik's armies defeated an Italian invasion at Adwa, the only decisive African victory over a European colonial army of that era. Ethiopia joined the League of Nations in 1923 under the regent who became Emperor Haile Selassie. Mussolini's Italy invaded in 1935, using poison gas, and occupied the country until British and Ethiopian forces restored the emperor in 1941. The five years left roads, buildings and the macchiato, but not a colony.

Haile Selassie modernised from the top: a written constitution, schools, an airline founded in 1945, and Addis Ababa as the seat of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. But land stayed with the church and nobility, and a famine in Wollo in 1973 that the court tried to hide helped bring him down. In 1974 a committee of soldiers, the Derg, deposed him and turned the country into a Marxist-Leninist state under Mengistu Haile Mariam.

The Derg nationalised land, fought a war with Somalia over the Ogaden in 1977–78, and in the Red Terror killed tens of thousands of suspected opponents. Rebellions in Eritrea and Tigray grew, and the famine of 1983–85 killed hundreds of thousands. In 1991 a coalition led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front took Addis Ababa, and in 1993 Eritrea became independent after a referendum.

The new order, led by Meles Zenawi, divided the country into regions defined by ethnicity and language, with a constitutional right to secede. It delivered fast growth, roads, dams and a larger airline, but little political freedom. A border war with Eritrea in 1998–2000 killed tens of thousands and froze relations for 18 years.

Protests in Oromia and Amhara brought Abiy Ahmed to power in 2018. He freed prisoners, made peace with Eritrea and won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, but the ruling coalition split and war broke out with Tigray in November 2020. The Pretoria agreement ended it in November 2022, after a death toll counted in hundreds of thousands. Fighting then spread to Amhara, where Fano militias rose in 2023, and unrest continued in parts of Oromia. In September 2026 fighting resumed across the north and into Afar; the situation is changing and should be checked before any travel.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the country's oldest institution. It kept Ge'ez as its liturgical language, a canon of scripture larger than other churches', and practices close to its Jewish roots: circumcision, dietary rules and the Sabbath. Every church holds a tabot, a replica of the tablets of the Law; the church in Aksum claims to hold the original Ark of the Covenant, which no one but its guardian monk may see.

Religious life is visible everywhere. White-shawled worshippers stand outside churches at dawn, priests carry hand crosses for the faithful to kiss, and some 180–250 days a year are fasting days for the most observant, when no animal products are eaten. Timkat, the Epiphany, brings the tabots out in procession to water; Meskel, the Finding of the True Cross, is marked by a huge bonfire.

Islam arrived in the prophet Muhammad's lifetime, when his early followers took refuge with the Christian king of Aksum — an episode Muslims remember as the First Hijra. Harar became a walled centre of Islamic learning, and Muslims today make up roughly a third of the population, especially among the Somali, Afar, Harari and many Oromo.

Protestant churches, known as Pentay, have grown fast since the 1960s, especially in the south and west, and now account for about a fifth of Ethiopians. Most of the Beta Israel, Ethiopia's Jewish community from around Gondar, emigrated to Israel from the 1980s. In the south, older beliefs survive alongside the major faiths.

Ethiopia keeps its own calendar, related to the Coptic one. The year has 12 months of 30 days each, followed by Pagume, a 13th month of 5 days (6 in leap years). New Year, Enkutatash, falls on 11 September (12 September before a Gregorian leap year), at the end of the long rains when the meskel daisies flower.

The year number runs about seven to eight years behind the Gregorian one, because the church calculated the date of the Annunciation differently. The Ethiopian year 2019 began in September 2026. Official documents, bus tickets and some bills use Ethiopian dates, and the government, banks and schools run on them.

The clock is local too. A 12-hour day begins at dawn and a 12-hour night at dusk, so 1 o'clock in the morning Ethiopian time is 7 am. People switch easily between systems, but it is worth asking 'Ethiopian time?' whenever someone gives you an hour for a bus, a tour or a meeting.

The Christian feasts are fixed to this calendar: Genna on 29 Tahsas (7 January), Timkat on 11 Tir (19 January), Meskel on 17 Meskerem (27 September). Fasika, Easter, moves with the Orthodox reckoning. Muslim holidays follow the lunar Hijri calendar and move about 11 days earlier each year.

Most of Ethiopia is a high plateau, split by the Great Rift Valley running south-west to north-east. The northern highlands rise to Ras Dashen in the Simien at about 4,550 m; the Bale Mountains in the south hold the largest area of Afro-alpine land on the continent. Altitude, not latitude, sets the climate: the Amharic terms dega (highland), woyna dega (middle) and kolla (hot lowland) describe the zones farmers still plan by.

The highlands catch the monsoon. The big rains, kiremt, fall roughly June to September and feed the Blue Nile, which leaves Lake Tana and supplies most of the Nile's water in Egypt during the flood. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, inaugurated in 2025 on the Blue Nile near Sudan, is the largest hydroelectric project in Africa and a long-running dispute with Egypt and Sudan.

The Rift floor holds a chain of lakes — Ziway, Langano, Abijata, Shalla, Hawassa, Abaya and Chamo — each with its own chemistry and birdlife. To the north-east it drops to the Danakil Depression, more than 100 m below sea level, with the lava lake of Erta Ale and the acid pools of Dallol.

Endemic wildlife reflects the isolation of the plateau: the Ethiopian wolf, Africa's rarest canid, on the Bale and Simien uplands; the mountain nyala; the gelada monkey of the northern escarpments; and more than 20 endemic birds. Coffee arabica itself grows wild in the south-western forests of Kaffa and the region around it.

Teff, a tiny grain domesticated in the highlands, is fermented for days and poured as a batter onto a clay griddle, the mitad, to make injera: sour, spongy and full of holes that soak up sauce. It is plate and cutlery at once. Wat stews coloured red with berbere — dried chilli, fenugreek, korarima and a dozen other spices — and yellow alicha stews with turmeric sit on top, with tibs of sautéed meat and cottage cheese (ayib) on the side.

Fasting shapes the menu. On Wednesdays, Fridays and in the 55-day Lent before Easter, Orthodox Christians eat no meat, dairy or eggs, and restaurants serve beyaynetu: shiro, lentils, split peas, cabbage and greens around one injera. Feast days go the other way, with doro wat, raw beef (kitfo, kurt) and butter spiced with herbs.

Ethiopians say coffee was discovered here, in the forests of Kaffa, and the country is Africa's largest producer. The coffee ceremony is hospitality itself: green beans roasted in a pan, the smoke wafted to guests, the grounds boiled in a black clay jebena and poured in three rounds, abol, tona and baraka, with incense and popcorn. Refusing is hard; staying for all three is polite.

Regional cooking differs: the Gurage south-west of Addis live on enset, the false banana, fermented into kocho bread and eaten with kitfo; Harar's food shows Arab and Indian trade links; the Rift lakes supply fish; and the Somali and Afar lowlands eat rice, pasta and camel milk. Tej, honey wine, and tella, home-brewed beer, are the traditional drinks.