Source: CIA World Factbook

Official name:	Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Form of government:	federal republic
Chief of State:	President GIRMA Woldegiorgis (since 8 October 2001)
Head of government:	Prime Minister Prime Minister MELES Zenawi (since August 1995)
Capital:	Addis Ababa
Official Language:	None, Amharic is the working language
Monetary Unit:	Birr
Population estimate:	78,254,090 (July 2008 est.)

Proportion of population under the age of 18:
more than 50%

Median age:
total: 18.1 years
male: 18 years
female: 18.2 years (2008 est.)

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 42.7%
male: 50.3%
female: 35.1% (2003 est.)

Education expenditures - percent of GDP: 6% (2006)

Primary School enrolment 2000-2004 (source: Unicef 2006):
male: 55%
female: 47%

Secondary School enrolment 2000-2004 (source: Unicef 2006):
male: 23%
female: 13%

Child Labour (5-14 years) 1999-2004 (source: Unicef 2006):
total: 43%
male: 47%
female: 37%

Ratified Conventions ILO:
138 on Minimum Working Age

182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour GDP - per capita (PPP):
$800 (2007 est.)

GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 47%
industry: 13.2%
services: 39.8% (2007 est.)

Labour force:
27.27 million (1999)

Labour force - by occupation:
agriculture: 80%
industry: 8%
services: 12% (1985)

Agriculture - products:
cereals, pulses, coffee, oilseed, cotton, sugarcane, potatoes, qat, cut flowers; hides, cattle, sheep, goats; fish

Industries:
food processing, beverages, textiles, leather, chemicals, metals processing, cement
Industries:
food processing, beverages, textiles, leather, chemicals, metals processing, cement

Freedom from colonial rule
Unique among African countries, the ancient Ethiopian monarchy maintained its freedom from colonial rule with the exception of the 1936-41 Italian occupation during World War II. In 1974, a military junta, the Derg, deposed Emperor Haile SELASSIE (who had ruled since 1930) and established a socialist state.

Multiparty elections
Torn by bloody coups, uprisings, wide-scale drought, and massive refugee problems, the regime was finally toppled in 1991 by a coalition of rebel forces, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). A constitution was adopted in 1994, and Ethiopia's first multiparty elections were held in 1995.

Border war Eritrea
A border war with Eritrea late in the 1990s ended with a peace treaty in December 2000. The Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission in November 2007 remotely demarcated the border by geographical coordinates, but final demarcation of the boundary on the ground is currently on hold because of Ethiopian objections.

Agriculture
Ethiopia's poverty-stricken economy is based on agriculture, accounting for almost half of GDP, 60% of exports, and 80% of total employment. The agricultural sector suffers from frequent drought and poor cultivation practices.

Coffee and qat
Coffee is critical to the Ethiopian economy with exports of some $350 million in 2006, but historically low prices have seen many farmers switching to qat (a tropical evergreen plant whose leaves are used as a stimulant) to supplement income.

Debt relief
The war with Eritrea in 1998-2000 and recurrent drought have buffeted the economy, in particular coffee production. In November 2001, Ethiopia qualified for debt relief from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, and in December 2005 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) voted to forgive Ethiopia's debt to the body.

State owns all the land
Under Ethiopia's constitution, the state owns all land and provides long-term leases to the tenants; the system continues to hamper growth in the industrial sector as entrepreneurs are unable to use land as collateral for loans. Drought struck again late in 2002, leading to a 3.3% decline in GDP in 2003. Normal weather patterns helped agricultural and GDP growth recover during 2004-07.

(sources: People In Need, Survey IPEC 2001)
Rampant
Child labour is rampant in Ethiopia. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) report of 2006, nearly 60 percent of the nation’s children are engaged in work.

Children are involved in both paid and unpaid jobs. Many of these children are not only from poor families but also from richer families who require their labour to run their businesses and on family farms.

Girls
Although surveys typically identify higher rates of child labour among boys, this is in large part due to the narrow definition of child labour. If consideration is given to household tasks and care of younger siblings, the work typically undertaken by girls is more time consuming that that of boys.

Almost all work is performed for the household but it is impossible to ignore the proportion of children migrate to urban areas in order to work. Herding, fetching wood and water are the most common activities performed by children. However, older boys tend to specialise in farm work whereas older girls specialise in domestic work.

Time-intensive
Data on herding participation suggests that labour activities are time-intensive, requiring the child to work seven days a week for an average of eight hours per day. Child labour is also found in mines, including bootleg prospecting for gold, a common practice in this part of the world.

Child labour may be a major cause of the extremely low enrolment rates observed in rural Ethiopia, particularly among older children. As already mentioned, almost all children do some work activities and the majority have work as their main activity.

Inactive
Less than 10% of children aged over 10 are ‘inactive' (have neither work nor school as their main activity). It might be argued that the decision to not attend school precedes the decision to work and that these children work because they don't go to school.

However, when asked why children considered old enough to attend school do not, more than half of the parents who responded indicated as the primary reason the need for their children to work whereas less than a quarter blamed the cost of schooling and 11% cited the availability/proximity of schools. Even enrolled children continue to shoulder a heavy workload, which is likely to affect their performance at school (IREWOC, 2007).

Low school enrolment
School enrolment as well as the quality of schooling in Ethiopia is among the lowest in the world. According to the country’s 2001 Child Labour Survey Report based on 18 million children aged 5-17, for example, only 38% were attending school. The report also disclosed that more than 40% of the children aged 13-17 years never went to school and 33% combined work and schooling.

Rural-urban disparity
While Ethiopia is officially committed to achieve universal primary education, it faces huge challenges on the way to achieve this goal. The overall situation in the education sector is characterised by a large rural-urban disparity, as well as a pronounced gender gap.

Access
Access to school is a mayor problem that is especially pronounced in rural areas. According to the 2001 Child Labour Force Survey, one in seven youths blames the lack of a school in the area as the reason for non-enrolment. The 2000 Welfare Monitoring Survey found one third of the children in rural areas of the sample lived at least 5 kilometres away from the nearest primary school.

Complex
But even out of the group of rural children with a primary school in the immediate vicinity, only 43.6% are enrolled (compared to 85.5% in urban areas). These numbers point to the fact that problems of enrolment and attendance are more complex than simply proximity and that improved access needs to be combined with other incentives.

Girls
School enrolment rates are lower and dropouts and educational failures are higher for girls. The government has intervened by introducing different girls’ education programs and laws, such as an early marriage ban. Actions such as special tutoring for girls are also helping to narrow the gaps.