Ethiopia is Africa's oldest independent country and, with the exception of a five-year occupation by Mussolini's Italy, has never been colonised.

But it has become better known for its periodic droughts and famines, and for its long civil war and subsequent border war with Eritrea.

OVERVIEW

In the first part of the 20th century Ethiopia forged strong links with Britain, whose troops helped evict the Italians in 1941 and put Emperor Haile Selassie back on his throne. During the 1960s and early 1970s British influence gave way to that of the US, which in turn was supplanted by the USSR.

Although relatively free from the coups that have plagued other African countries, Ethiopia's turmoil has been no less devastating. Drought, famine, war and ill-conceived policies brought millions to the brink of starvation in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1974 this helped topple Haile Selassie. His regime was replaced by a self-proclaimed Marxist junta under which thousands of opponents were purged or killed, property was confiscated and defence spending spiralled.

With the overthrow of the junta in 1991, political and economic conditions stabilised somewhat, but not enough to restore investors' confidence, which received a further blow with the war with Eritrea in the late 1990s.

A fragile truce has held, but the UN has warned that continuing disputes over the demarcation of the border threaten peace.

Ethiopia remains one of Africa's poorest states, with a very low income per capita and a population that is almost two-thirds illiterate. Its economy is highly dependent on agriculture, which in turn is almost entirely dependent on rainfall.

Many Ethiopians rely on food aid from abroad. In 2004 the government began a drive to move more than two million people away from the arid highlands of the east. It said the programme was a lasting solution to food shortages.

FACTS

• Population: 74.2 million (UN, 2005)
• Capital: Addis Ababa
• Area: 1.13 million sq km (437,794 sq miles)
• Major languages: Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali
• Major religions: Christianity, Islam
• Life expectancy: 46 years (men), 49 years (women) (UN)
• Monetary unit: 1 Birr = 100 cents
• Main exports: Coffee, hides, oilseeds, beeswax, sugarcane
• GNI per capita: US $90 (World Bank, 2003)
• Internet domain: .et
• International dialling code: +251

LEADERS

Head of state: President Woldegiorgis Girma

Prime minister: Meles Zenawi

Meles Zenawi: From Marxist to free marketeer

The ruling party of incumbent premier Meles Zenawi won bitterly-contested elections in May 2005, paving the way for his third, five-year stint as prime minister.

Official results, announced in August, showed that the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had won 296 out of 547 seats - enough for a working majority.

Claims of vote rigging accompanied the poll, and the EPRDF and the main opposition both claimed victory as the initial results were announced. Thirty-six people were killed and thousands were arrested in protests sparked by opposition allegations of electoral fraud by the ruling party.

Meles Zenawi was re-elected by parliament for a second five-year term in October 2000, following Ethiopia's first multi-party elections.

He was one of the architects of the 1994 constitution, which provided for a federal republic with ethnically-based regions. In 1995 he became prime minister.

Mr Zenawi took part in the guerrilla campaign against the Mengistu regime, and was chosen as transitional head of state after the overthrow of the dictator in 1991.

Initially a Marxist-Leninist, by the 1990s he had become a champion of the free market and parliamentary democracy.