Ethiopia

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa bordered by Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Sudan, with Addis Ababa as its capital and largest city and the headquarters of the African Union Commission. The Ethiopian Empire traces its establishment to 1270, and Ethiopia holds an exceptional place in African history for repelling foreign invasions, defeating Italian forces at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 and, alongside Liberia, remaining among the only African states never fully colonized during the Scramble for Africa, despite a brief Italian occupation from 1936 to 1941 that ended with the restoration of sovereignty in 1944. A Soviet-backed military government, the Derg, ruled from 1974 to 1991. Ethiopia operates today as a federal parliamentary republic under an authoritarian government, and with approximately 138 million people as of 2025 it is the tenth most populous country in the world and the second most populous in Africa.