Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a country in Africa.

It has high mountains and green hills. Deep valleys and rivers cut through the land. Ethiopia has no seaside. The capital city is Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is in East Africa, on the Horn of Africa. It has no coast of its own. It is the largest country in the Horn of Africa and the one with the most people: more than 110 million.

Much of Ethiopia is high land, and its landscape is among the most rugged in Africa. The Great Rift Valley runs right through the middle of the country. Ethiopia is also one of the oldest countries in the world. Its capital, Addis Ababa, is almost at its center.

Britannica describes Ethiopia as a landlocked country on the Horn of Africa, lying entirely within the tropics and roughly as long from north to south as it is wide. It is the largest and most populous country in the Horn and became landlocked when Eritrea, its former province on the Red Sea, seceded in 1993. The Ethiopian Statistics Service projects 113,806,002 people for July 2026, about 28.1 million of them in urban areas.

Its topography is among the most rugged in Africa. Lava flows of the past 65 million years have laid basalt over two-thirds of the land, 300 to almost 3,000 m thick, and the Rift Valley, a massive tectonic trough, runs down the middle from Eritrea to Kenya. Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest countries; in ancient times it was centered on Aksum in the north. Addis Ababa, near the center, hosts the headquarters of the African Union and of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Addis Ababa is the biggest city in Ethiopia.

It has tall buildings and parks. Gondar has old stone castles with towers. In Lalibela, people carved whole churches out of solid rock.

Addis Ababa is Ethiopia's capital and largest city. The African Union, a group of the countries of Africa, has its headquarters there.

In the north, the city of Gondar became a permanent capital in 1636. Its royal compound, Fasil Ghebbi, has stone castles with towers, surrounded by a wall 900 meters long. At Lalibela, eleven churches from the Middle Ages were carved out of solid rock, with doors, windows and roofs cut from the stone. In Aksum, tall carved stone pillars called obelisks stand from a kingdom that lasted from the 1st to the 8th century.

Addis Ababa, the capital, holds the headquarters of the African Union (the Organization of African Unity until 2002) and most of the country's cultural institutions, including the National Museum. In the north, King Fasil (Fasilidas) made Gondar a permanent capital in 1636. Its fortified compound, Fasil Ghebbi, a World Heritage Site since 1979, grew to six major building complexes inside a 900 m wall with twelve entrances, and the city was the center of government until 1864.

At Lalibela, UNESCO describes eleven medieval monolithic churches hewn from the living rock, attributed to King Lalibela in the 12th century (Britannica dates them to the 13th) and linked by trenches and passages. Biete Ghiorgis, the Church of Saint George, has a cross-shaped plan. Aksum, capital of a kingdom that lasted from the 1st to the 8th century AD, keeps carved obelisks; the largest standing one is over 23 m tall, and a 33 m one lies where it fell. Harar Jugol, in the east, became an important center of Islamic culture and trade by the 16th century.

Ethiopia has many tall mountains.

The highest one is called Ras Dejen. A long, deep valley runs through the middle of Ethiopia. In one place the land is lower than the sea. It is very hot there.

Ethiopia's highest mountain, Ras Dejen, is 4,533 meters tall. Lake Tana, the country's largest lake, lies in the highlands at about 1,800 meters and is the main reservoir for the Blue Nile River.

The Great Rift Valley splits the highlands in two. In the northeast, the Denakil Plain drops to 116 meters below sea level. It is hot and dry, and it has active volcanoes. In the high country the weather is mild, while the lowlands are hot. The long rainy season comes in June, July and August.

The North Central massifs form what Britannica calls the roof of Ethiopia, from Ras Dejen (Dashen), 4,533 m, down to the Blue Nile and Tekeze channels about 3,000 m below. Lake Tana, the largest lake and the Blue Nile's main reservoir, lies at about 1,800 m. The Rift Valley has two parts: a funnel-shaped northeastern section, where the Kobar Sink in the Denakil Plain reaches 116 m below sea level and Erta Ale is the most active volcano, and a higher southwestern section holding the Lakes Region. Hayli Gubbi, about 15 km from Erta Ale, erupted on November 23, 2025, its first documented eruption in about 12,000 years.

Three drainage systems carry the water: the Blue Nile, Tekeze and Baro flow west toward the White Nile; the Awash, the Lakes Region and the Omo drain internally, the Omo into Lake Turkana; and the Shebele and Genale run southeast toward Somalia. Highland averages are in the mid-teens °C and lowland averages in the upper 20s. The bega dry season (September to February) is followed by the short belg rains (March and April) and the long kremt rains (June to August).

Some animals in Ethiopia live nowhere else.

The walia ibex is a wild mountain goat. Gelada monkeys live in the mountains too. So does the Ethiopian wolf.

Ethiopia's high mountains are home to animals found almost nowhere else. In the Simien Mountains lives the walia ibex, a wild mountain goat found nowhere else in the world. The Ethiopian wolf and the gelada, a kind of monkey, live there too, and so does the mountain nyala, a kind of antelope, in the highlands.

The lowlands have oryx, greater kudu, waterbuck and black-and-white colobus monkeys. Lions, leopards, elephants and giraffes have become rare. To protect its wildlife, Ethiopia has set aside parks and reserves covering about 5 percent of the country.

Britannica names the walia ibex of the Simien Mountains, the mountain nyala and the Simien jackal as uniquely Ethiopian and among the most endangered species, with the gelada also under threat; their numbers range from a few hundred for the ibex to a few thousand for the others. UNESCO's Simien National Park (inscribed 1978), where erosion over millions of years has carved peaks and precipices dropping some 1,500 m, protects the walia ibex, found nowhere else in the world, the gelada and the Ethiopian wolf.

Lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses and buffalo are now rarities, especially in the north; remnants of big game survive in the Rift Valley, the Omo River valley and the Western Lowlands, while foxes, jackals, wild dogs and hyenas are widespread. Oryx, greater kudu, waterbuck, wild pigs and the black-and-white colobus, called guereza in Ethiopia, live in the lowlands. Twenty national parks, game reserves and sanctuaries cover 55,220 km², about 5 percent of the country.

More than 110 million people live in Ethiopia.

They speak many different languages. Amharic and Oromo are two of the biggest. Many meals are served on injera, a big, soft flatbread. Spicy stews go on top of it.

More than 110 million people live in Ethiopia, and together they speak about 100 languages. Amharic and Oromo are the two most widely spoken, and Amharic is the language the national government works in. Many Ethiopians are Christians, and about one-third are Muslims.

A traditional meal is served on a shared platter covered with injera, a soft, spongy flatbread made from a grain called teff. Each person tears off a piece of injera and uses it to scoop up spicy stews called wats. Coffee often ends the meal.

The Ethiopian Statistics Service projects 113,806,002 people for July 2026; estimates differ widely, and the World Bank's midyear estimate for 2025, which draws on United Nations figures, is 135,472,051. Britannica describes a mosaic of about 100 languages: most are Semitic (such as Amharic, Tigrinya and Gurage), Cushitic (such as Oromo, Somali and Afar) or Omotic, all Afro-Asiatic, with a few Nilotic languages in the Western Lowlands. Ge'ez, the ancient language of Aksum, is used today in the writings and worship of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The constitution recognizes all Ethiopian languages; Amharic is the federal working language and, with Oromo, one of the two most widely spoken.

More than two-fifths of Ethiopians follow the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, about one-fifth other Christian faiths, mostly Protestant, and about one-third practice Islam, which arrived in the 7th century. Meals center on injera, a spongy flatbread of slightly fermented teff batter that serves as plate and utensil, topped with wats and alechas; berbere, a spice paste made hot with dried chilies, flavors many dishes. Because the Orthodox church asks its members to go without meat on as many as 250 days a year, vegetarian dishes of lentils and chickpeas are important.