Eye On

You can find the country of Ethiopia in Africa, in a region known as the "Horn of Africa".

From looking at a map of the region below, can you guess how this region got its nickname?

Ethiopia is surrounded by five countries.
Can you work out their names from the anagrams on the map?
Roll over the anagrams to find out if you were right!

Click for a flag of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is a landlocked country.
Can you guess what that means?
Look closely at the map to get a big clue!

It used to have a coastline, but when the region of Eritrea became a new country in 1993, this was lost. Because of the fighting with Eritrea, it had to use the port of Djibouti instead for almost all of its trade.

Ethiopia used to be called Abyssinia, and is one of the oldest countries in the world, being at least 2,000 years old. Click to find out more about Ethiopia's rich history.

The capital city of Ethiopia is called Addis Ababa, which lies almost in the centre of the country. In Ethiopian towns and cities, people live in different types of housing. Look at the two pictures below, and you will see what I mean …

What sort of people live in the different types of housing?
What are the houses in each picture made of?
What do the two pictures tell you about differences in the standard of living in Ethiopian towns and cities?

One of the things we remember about Ethiopia in the UK is that its terrible famine in 1984 led to the Band Aid campaign and the song 'Feed the world - do they know it's Christmas?' which you can still hear every Christmas.

Despite a lot of help from other countries, more people were at risk from food shortages in 2000 than in 1984. There are many reasons for this. Click on the words, food shortage to read a bit about why a food shortage, or even a famine can occur.

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