ABSTRACT
Unlike most of Africa, Ethiopia has a history of self-rule dating back to nearly 1000 Be. Covering an area of 1.22 million square kilometres (472,000 square miles), it is located on the eastern horn of Africa and, since the independence of Eritrea, a small nation created on Ethiopia's northern border along the Red Sea in 1993, is officially landlocked. Bordered to the east by Djibouti and Somalia, to the south by Kenya, to the west by Sudan, Ethiopia had an estimated population in 1994 of 54.9 million, making it one of the most populous nations in Africa.
