Ethiopia profile
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Map source: OCHA/ReliefWeb
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Ethiopia is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa. Officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, it is the second-most populous nation in Africa with almost 83 million people and at 1,100,000 km2, the tenth-largest by area.
Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, and Kenya to the south. Its capital is the city of Addis Ababa.
Poverty affects a vast majority of the Ethiopian population (variously estimated at between 76 and 85.9 million people), of whom two-thirds are illiterate.
The country is dependent on agriculture with drought a common occurrence, leading directly to famine.
At least 85 per cent of the Ethiopian people rely on crop production, which makes the cycle of drought and famine heavily politicised issues, as well as natural catastrophes for the people affected. Coffee, a key export, is vulnerable to price fluctuations as well as drought.
Every year, between six and 13 million people are in danger of starvation in Ethiopia, and, in an average year, five to six million people seek food aid.
Government estimates currently have 6.2 million people in need of aid but other estimates put this as high as 13.9 million.
For information about GOAL's work in Ethiopia, please click here.
Ethiopia - Fact Box
| Average life expectancy: 56.2 years (female), 53.3 years (male) |
| Infant mortality: 69 deaths per 1,000 births (World Bank, 2009) |
| Children under five years underweight for their age: 38 per cent |
| Probability at birth of not surviving to age of 40: 27.7 per cent |
| Population not using an improved water source: 58 per cent |
| People living below poverty line of US$2 a day: 77.5 per cent |
| Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs): 200,000 |
| Gross National Income (GNI): US$280 (World Bank, 2009) |
| Ethiopia ranked 171st out of 182 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (2009) |
Unless otherwise stated, all statistics in the Fact Box have been sourced from the United Nations' Development Report 2009.