Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a landlocked country in northeast Africa (Horn of Africa) with a population of 77.4 million and capital city of Addis Ababa. The country is plagued by war and hunger. There was a 30 year civil between 1961 and 1991 and a border war with Eritrea to the north 1998-2000. It avoided colonization from Europe over the centuries except for a brief period 1936 to 1941 when Italy was there.

Media
The BBC says of the country's media:


 * Radio is the medium of choice, reaching the rural areas where most Ethiopians live. Although the state controls most of Ethiopia's radio stations and the sole national TV network, the print and broadcast media have seen dramatic changes since the fall of Mengistu in the early 1990s. Deregulation has been on the cards for some years and in 2006 licences were awarded to two private FM stations in the capital. Some opposition groups beam radio broadcasts to Ethiopia using hired shortwave transmitters overseas.


 * The private press offers quite different reporting to the state-owned newspapers and is often critical of the government. The International Press Institute (IPI) reported in its 2006 World Press Freedom Review that the prosecution of journalists had "almost silenced independent journalism".

Leaders

 * Woldegiorgis Girma, President, Head of state
 * Meles Zenawi, Prime minister, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), since 1995

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa Headlines and Timeline
 * Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association
 * Ethiopian Human Rights Council
 * Horn of Africa
 * U.S. Africa Command
 * Robert Houdek, was the senior US diplomat in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, as was James R. Cheek
 * Relief Society of Tigray
 * Ethiopia: political and security impact of the drought (CIA report)
 * In Aug 1986 head of USAID was M. Peter McPherson
 * United Nations Office for Emergency Operations in Africa

External articles

 * "Starbucks in Ethiopia coffee vow", BBC, June 21, 2007.
 * Thomas Mountain, "Funding Genocide in the Horn of Africa: Famine, Counterinsurgency and Food Aid Blockades in Ethiopia", Counterpunch, May 10, 2011.

External resources

 * Timeline: Ethiopia, BBC, accessed March 2008.
 * Ethiopia, Africa Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, accessed March 2008.