page_title: Ethiopia
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Ethiopia / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Ethiopian general election 2005&#160;: parliament composition. Image only shows parties with more than 10 seats. The group "others" includes parties under 10 seats. Red&#160;: EPRDF Green&#160;: CUD Purple&#160;: UEDF Dark blue&#160;: SPDP Orange&#160;: OFDM Light blue&#160;: Others Français&#160;: Composition du parlement éthiopien après les élections de 2005. Seuls les partis avec plus de dix sièges sont représentés, en-dessous, ils sont regroupés dans "autres". Rouge&#160;: FDRPE Vert&#160;: CUD Violet&#160;: FDEU Bleu foncé&#160;: PDPS Orange&#160;: MDFO Bleu clair&#160;: autres
context_page_description: Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west and Sudan to the northwest. With over 109 million inhabitants as of 2019, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world and the second-most populous nation on the African continent. The country has a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres. Its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa, which lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African and Somali tectonic plates. Ethiopian national identity is grounded in the historic and contemporary roles of Christianity and Islam, and the independence of Ethiopia from foreign rule, stemming from the various ancient Ethiopian kingdoms of antiquity.
  Some of the oldest skeletal evidence for anatomically modern humans has been found in Ethiopia. It is widely considered as the region from which modern humans first set out for the Middle East and places beyond.
context_section_description: The politics of Ethiopia takes place in a framework of a federal parliamentary republic, wherein the Prime Minister is the head of government.
  The President is the head of state but with largely ceremonial powers. Executive power is exercised by the government. Federal legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament. On the basis of Article 78 of the 1994 Ethiopian Constitution, the Judiciary is completely independent of the executive and the legislature. In 2015, the realities of this provision were questioned in a report prepared by Freedom House.
  According to the Democracy Index published by the United Kingdom-based Economist Intelligence Unit in late 2010, Ethiopia was an "authoritarian regime", ranking as the 118th-most democratic out of 167 countries. Ethiopia had dropped 12 places on the list since 2006, and the 2010 report attributed the drop to the government's crackdown on opposition activities, media and civil society before the 2010 parliamentary election, which the report argued had made Ethiopia a de facto one-party state.
  However, since the appointment of Abiy Ahmed as prime minister in 2018, the situation has rapidly evolved.
  In July 2015, during a trip that then-U.S. President Barack Obama took to Ethiopia, he highlighted the role of the country in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Obama was the first sitting United States president to visit Ethiopia.
caption: Ethiopian general election, 2005. Only parties with more than 10 seats shown.
  Red: EPRDF
  Green: CUD
  Purple: UEDF
  Dark blue: SPDP
  Orange: OFDM
  Light blue: Others
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