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Ethiopia |
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Country information
ETHIOPIA TODAY
Country Facts
Area: 1.1 million sq km (450,000 sq miles)
Population: 76-78 million (various estimates circa 2005 – 2007 census results not published)
Capital City: Addis Ababa
People: Oromo 32%, Amhara 30%, Southern peoples and nationalities (Gurage Sidamo/Walaita/Others) 10%, Tigre 6%, Somali 6%, Others (combined smaller ethnic groups) 16% (compiled from various estimates)
Language(s): Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromigna, Southern languages (eg Guragigna, Sidaminga), Somali, Arabic, other local dialects and English (being the major foreign language taught in schools)
Religion(s): Orthodox Christianity 45%, Protestant 10%, Islam 40%, animist 4%, other 1% (average of various estimates)
Currency:Ethiopian Birr exchange rate 18.8 birr to £1
Major political parties: TThe government is run by the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), an alliance between 4 parties – the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), Oromo Peoples Democratic Organisation (OPDO) and Southern Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Movement (SEPDM) - and 7 other smaller affiliated ethnic parties. Major opposition parties are the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP) - now split into 3 factions, the United Ethiopian Democratic Party –Medhin (UEDP-Medhin), and the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM).
Head of State: (President) Girma WoldeGiorgis (with little formal power)
Prime Minister: Meles Zenawi (with full executive powers)
Foreign Minister: Seyoum Mesfin
Membership of international groupings/organisations: United Nations, African Union (AU), Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
ECONOMY
Basic Economic Facts
GDP: US$17bn (2007)
Real GDP growth: 9.6-9.8% (2007)
GDP per head: US$917 (2007)
Inflation: 16-17% (2007)
Major Industries: Agriculture and animal husbandry 80%, Government and services 12%, Industry and construction 8%.
Major trading partners: Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, US, Germany, China, Japan, Italy and India. Agriculture accounts for nearly half the country's GDP, 60% of its exports and 80% of total employment. Rural Ethiopia is exceptionally poor. However, the last 5 years have seen impressive growth rates of averaging above 10%. Inflationary pressures are growing, especially on food prices.
HISTORY
Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa. It resisted colonisation by Italy and achieved international recognition in 1896 as a traditional monarchy, led by Emperor Menelik II. For much of the 20th century Ethiopia was ruled by Haile Selassie, crowned as Emperor in 1930. In 1936 Italy attacked Ethiopia from its colonies in neighbouring Somalia and Eritrea and occupied the country until 1941. Haile Selassie spent his exile in the UK, and was restored to power with British and Commonwealth military assistance. His long rule ended with the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974.
Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam emerged as the leader of the Provisional Military Administrative Council (known as the Derg) in 1977 which became a brutal Marxist dictatorship. Ethiopia was wracked by civil war for most of the Derg period, including a secessionist war in the northern province of Eritrea, an irredentist war with Somalia, and regional rebellions - notably in Tigray and Oromia. The population experienced massive human rights abuse and intense economic hardship, including acute famine in 1984/5.The Derg was overthrown in May 1991 when rebels of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) captured Addis Ababa. Meles Zenawi took the leadership.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Eritrea
Eritrea secured independence from Ethiopia after a UN supervised referendum in 1993. A dispute over the ill-defined border with Ethiopia flared into military conflict in May 1998. There were an estimated 100,000 casualties. Hostilities concluded with the signing of the Algiers Peace Agreement of December 2000. This established a Boundary Commission to delimit and demarcate the border and established a 25km Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) between the 2 countries. A UN peacekeeping force (UNMEE) has been deployed along the TSZ since 2001. India, Jordan and Kenya are the major troop contributors to the now-2000 strong force. Under the Peace Agreement, UNMEE was to remain in place until the delimitation and demarcation of the border had been completed.
The Boundary Commission (BC) announced its decision on the border on 13 April 2002. Demarcation was due to follow in 2003. However, when it became clear that the town of Badme (where the hostilities started) had been awarded to Eritrea, Ethiopia challenged the BC's conclusions. In November 2004 Ethiopia announced its acceptance "in principle" of the BC ruling but progress on demarcation remains stalled and tensions between the two countries remain high. With no progress on the ground, the Boundary Commission declared a virtual demarcation in November 2007. Ethiopia does not recognise the legal validity of the virtual demarcation.
UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea
Somalia
Ethiopia has a restive Somali population of its own (Region V) - where an active insurgency is on-going – and still harbours memories of Somalia's occupation of the Ogaden in 1977/78 and has therefore played an active role in the peace-process in Somalia. However, Ethiopian intentions have been viewed with suspicion various Somali factions, exacerbated by the recent military intervention. Ethiopia has close relations with Somaliland (which has declared its independence from the rest of Somalia) and makes use of the Somaliland port of Berbera.
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia in December 2006 in support of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), then under pressure from the Mogadishu-based Islamic Courts Union. Ethiopia has committed to withdrawing its troops as soon as possible, but currently remains deployed in several locations in support of the TFG forces and a small African Union stabilisation force.
Djibouti
Djibouti is vital to Ethiopia because its port serves the majority of Ethiopia's import and export needs. Relations are generally good, but there have been periodic disagreements over the terms of Ethiopia's use of the port.
Ethiopia's Relations with the UK
Visits
The UK and Ethiopia enjoy a close relationship, including a major development partnership. Prime Minister Meles was a member of the Prime Minister's Africa Commission. The main recent contacts were:
- Former Prime Minister Blair (for a meeting of the Africa Commission) visited Ethiopia in 2004. Regular visits were made by Hilary Benn, former Secretary of State for International Development (October 2004, June 2005 and January 2006). Visits to Ethiopia were also made by Lord Malloch Brown Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, FCO (December 2008 and Baroness Shriti Vadera, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DFID (November 2007).
- Visits to the UK by Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, took place in March 2005, May 2004 and February 2003. The Ethiopian Foreign Minister, Seyyoum Mesfin, visited in November 2007.
Cultural Relations
The British Council is the focal point for cultural relations between Britain and Ethiopia and has been established in Addis Ababa since 1943.
Policy
For recent statements of UK Government policy towards Ethiopia see the Hansard website, and enter Ethiopia in the search engine.
GEOGRAPHY
Ethiopia is twice the size of France. It shares borders with Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. It is landlocked. It is divided into 9 ethnic-based regions plus the capital, Addis Ababa and the city administration of Dire Dawa.
TRADE AND INVESTMENT
The UK is the third largest investor in Ethiopia behind Saudi Arabia and France and the fourth largest exporter, behind Japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia. UK exports to Ethiopia in 2005 totalled £32 million, primarily in industrial and power generation equipment. Ethiopian exports to the UK totalled £18.45 million in 2004, mainly in leathers, hides and furs.
UK Trade & Investment Country Profile: Ethiopia
Development
Ethiopia is desperately poor. It contains one of the largest concentrations of poor people on the planet. Ethiopia ranks 170 out of 177 countries in the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report. 31 million people live on less than half a dollar a day and between 6 and 13 million people are at risk of starvation each year. Poverty in Ethiopia affects the majority of the population: 81% of the 71.3 million people live below a poverty line of $2 a day.
Livelihoods are predominantly based on agriculture, which accounts for 85% of employment, 45% of national income and over 90% of export earnings. Life expectancy is 48 years (UNICEF, 2004), under-5 mortality is 123 per 1,000 live births, and an estimated 1.4% of the adult population are living with HIV/AIDS (Demographic and Health Survey 2005). Food security is a major challenge. 15 million people are at risk from food insecurity, and over 8 million people are classed as chronically food insecure.
The commitment made by the Government of Ethiopia towards reducing poverty is starting to have results, but despite these signs of progress, Ethiopia remains unlikely to meet any of the MDG targets by 2015. If it is to have any chance of doing so, there will have to be a major improvement in economic growth and a massive increase in assistance from donors.
In January 2003 the UK signed a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding with Ethiopia which set out our mutual commitments in support of the government's poverty reduction programmes. A new DFID Country Assistance Plan for Ethiopia, which is designed to support the Government’s own poverty reduction strategy, is being prepared. Although DFID stopped providing general budget support in 2005, a new mechanism for providing assistance, called the Protection of Basic Services grant, has been introduced in collaboration with the World Bank and other donors. This will ensure that poor people continue to have access to the basic services they need (specifically, education, health, agriculture and water and sanitation services) and will also be a means of holding to account local officials responsible for delivering those services. DFID will contribute a total of £109 million by the end of June 2007.
DFID is also providing £70 million over 3 years (2005-2007) for the Productive Safety Net Programme, which aims to meet the needs of the chronically food insecure population, in addition to £11 million in 2005/6 for humanitarian relief. Total levels of UK development assistance in Ethiopia are rising significantly, from £60 million in 2004/5 to a planned £130 million in 2007/8. Provided the overall environment remains favourable, Ethiopia is expected to become the largest recipient of UK development assistance in Africa.
DFID Country Profile: Ethiopia
POLITICS
Ethiopia's current constitution was adopted in December 1994, with executive powers vested in the Prime Minister, the post Meles Zenawi has occupied since 1995. In a decisive break with Ethiopia's tradition of centralised rule, the new institutions are based on the principle of ethnic federalism, designed to provide self-determination and autonomy to Ethiopia's different ethnic groups. Elections in 1995 and 2000 gave the component parties of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) an overwhelming majority of seats in the national parliament. The regional governments were similarly dominated by the EPRDF affiliated parties. (General elections held on held 15 May 2005 revealed a sharp increase in public support for opposition parties. The final results, announced in September, gave the EPRDF and its affiliates control of the 547-seat parliament. Opposition parties gained a tenfold increase, with 176 seats. Two prominent coalitions dominated the opposition scene - the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF) formed in 2001 and the newer Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) formed in 2004. The CUD won 109 seats and the UEDF 52.
In the aftermath, the political atmosphere deteriorated. A large number of electoral complaints were made and elections were re-run in some constituencies. Opposition elements contested the conduct of the elections, and over 100 opposition members were arrested for an alleged role in stimulating violent protests in November 2005. After being detained for nearly 2 years, the courts found them guilty, but most were pardoned and released, coinciding with the celebrations of the Ethiopian millennium in September 2007.
Meanwhile the CUD split, 2 factions claiming the CUDP name, and one former consituent party, the United Ethiopian Democratic Party-Medhin, reestablishing its independent existence. Dissident CUD members - mostly based in the US and European diaspora - known as CUD-Kinjit joined a new opposition group named the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (AFD) in May 2006. The AFD also includes existing armed rebel movements fighting for regional causes, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Ethiopian Peoples Patriotic Front (EPPF).
HUMAN RIGHTS
The 1994 Ethiopian Constitution and many other laws offer strong protection for human rights, but these rights do not always translate into practice. Since the controversial multi-party elections of 2005, respect of human rights in Ethiopia has markedly deteriorated. Street demonstrations in Addis Ababa in June 2005, following the disputed elections, and a further wave of violent protests around the country in November 2005, resulted in 189 people killed (according to the official inquiry) including a several policemen. Opposition leaders have continued to face intimidation, harassment and the arrest of party activists in the difficult post election period. Oromo activists report continuing cases of harrassment and imprisonment. During 2007 until the present time an on-going insurgency in the Somali regions has met with a strong government response with numerous unconfirmed accounts of atrocities and detention. Only a single Ethiopian human rights NGO remains active and comprehensive information on the human rights situation is not available. International monitoring bodies note that detention without trial is common; prison conditions are very poor and allegations of torture under detention are common. Journalists in the independent press who criticise the government are at risk of arbitrary arrest and detention. In response to growing criticism the government appointed an Ombudsman and a Human Rights Commissioner in July 2004. The principal women's and children's rights issues are Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), violence and child marriages.Human Rights Annual Report 2007
