Ethiopia is a landlocked nation in the Horn of Africa. Its official name is the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. It is bounded to the north by Eritrea and Djibouti, to the east and northeast by Somalia, to the south by Kenya, to the west by South Sudan, and to the northwest by Sudan. Ethiopia has an area of 1,100,000 square kilometers (420,000 sq mi). It has 117 million people and is the world's 12th most populated nation, as well as the second most populous in Africa after Nigeria. Addis Abeba, the country's capital and biggest city, is located a few kilometers west of the East African Rift, which separates the African and Somali tectonic plates.
In the Middle Paleolithic era, anatomically modern humans evolved from present-day Ethiopia and spread to the Near East and beyond. Human settlement in Ethiopia by diverse Afroasiatic and Nilotic peoples may have begun in the third millennium BC. The Kingdom of D'mt was created on Ethiopia's northwestern boundary around 980 BC, while the Kingdom of Aksum maintained a coherent civilization in the area for 900 years. Christianity came in the fourth century, while Islam arrived in the seventh. Following the fall of Aksum in 960, a number of kingdoms flourished in what is now Ethiopia. The Zagwe dynasty controlled the north-central sections of Ethiopia until 1270, when it was defeated by Yekuno Amlak, establishing the Ethiopian Empire and its Solomonic line dynasty, which claimed ancestry from the legendary Solomon and Queen of Sheba via their son Menelik I. By the 14th century, the empire had grown in stature via geographical expansion until the mid-18th-century decentralization known as Zemene Mesafint when Emperor Tewodros II reunified and rebuilt Ethiopia.
From 1878 to 1880, Emperor Menelik II undertook a series of conquests known as Menelik's Expansions, which culminated in the construction of Ethiopia's present boundary. Externally, the Treaty of Wuchale in 1889 triggered a series of battles in which Ethiopia beat Italy in the Scramble for Africa in 1896, leaving Ethiopia and Liberia as independent African republics. In 1935, Fascist Italy seized Ethiopia and annexed it together with Italian-controlled Eritrea and Somaliland, constituting Italian East Africa. During the Second World War, the British army and the Ethiopian Arbegnoch force freed Ethiopia. The Derg, a Soviet-backed military dictatorship that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and the Solomonic family in 1974, governed the nation for almost 17 years, sparking the Ethiopian Civil War. Following the Derg's fall in 1991, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) ruled the nation with a new constitution and ethnic-based federalism. Ethiopia has since seen protracted and unresolved inter-ethnic conflict and governmental instability typified by democratic backsliding.
Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic country with around 80 ethnic groups. Ethiopia's major religions are Christianity and Islam. This sovereign state founded the United Nations, the Group of 24 (G-24), the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77, and the Organization of African Unity. Addis Abeba is home to the African Union, the Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Standby Force, and several worldwide non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on Africa. Ethiopia is seen as a developing nation and a rising power. From 2010 to 2020, it enjoyed 9.4 percent economic growth. In terms of per capita income and the Human Development Index, the nation is considered poor, with high rates of poverty, inadequate respect for human rights, and a literacy rate of barely 49 percent. Agriculture is Ethiopia's major industry, accounting for about half of the national GDP and more than 80% of the labor force in 2015.