Ethiopia

Despite this surface-water wealth, only about 13.5 percent of the population used a safely managed drinking-water source in 2024 (World Bank, drawing on the WHO/UNICEF JMP). Rural households often collect from unprotected wells, rivers and ponds, and waterborne disease remains common.

Agriculture employs most of the workforce and covers about 34 percent of the land, with staples such as teff, maize, sorghum and enset grown domestically. Recurrent drought still drives food insecurity and reliance on imported wheat and food aid.

The national dish is injera, a fermented sourdough flatbread of teff, eaten with lentil and split-pea stews such as shiro and misir, plus collard greens and vegetables. Nug (niger) seed oil and enset provide plant fats and starch.

In practice much smallholder farming is low-input, and a large part of the country's coffee is forest and shade grown, often organic by default, and Ethiopia is one of Africa's largest organic producers by number of farmers. Formal certification, however, remains a small share of the land.

Enforcement is uneven, with settlement, livestock grazing and cultivation inside park boundaries, and Simien Mountains National Park sat on UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger list from 1996 until 2017. The paper coverage is therefore stronger than the protection on the ground.

The Ethiopian wolf, Africa's most endangered carnivore and the world's rarest canid, numbers only a few hundred (about 360 to 440 adults) across the Bale and Simien mountains, the Walia ibex is found nowhere else on Earth, and the grass-grazing gelada, mountain nyala and Menelik's bushbuck are all endemic. Simien Mountains National Park (UNESCO, 1978) holds these alongside around 400 bird species.

king two to three weeks. The netela shawl and the habesha kemis dress, often edged with woven tibeb borders, are worn daily and at festivals.

de up about 46 percent of the country's plastic waste. Enforcement is new and unproven, and open dumping and litter remain widespread. Ambient PM2.5 averaged about 23.8 micrograms per cubic metre in 2023 (World Bank), moderate but still well above the WHO guideline.

, opened in 2018 to incinerate about 1,400 tonnes a day, has underperformed against its targets. Most material recovery is carried out informally by waste pickers.

Fossil CO2 emissions are among the lowest in the world at about 0.16 tonnes per person in 2023. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has sharply increased clean generation, and the country pursues its Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy aimed at low-carbon development. Very low emissions combined with a clean grid and a real policy framework place it at the top of this pillar.

x Christianity for well over a millennium. Living heritage includes the eleven rock-hewn churches of Lalibela (UNESCO, 1978), still an active pilgrimage site for festivals such as Genna and Timkat, and the ritual coffee ceremony served in three rounds (awol, tona and baraka). The Omo Valley in the south is home to many distinct indigenous peoples.

The eskista shoulder dance and music on the masinko, krar and washint remain central to daily and festival life. Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo traditions such as Timkat and Meskel continue as living ancestral and spiritual practice, and the Oromo Gada governance system is inscribed by UNESCO. The coffee ceremony and the distinct ancestral traditions of the Omo Valley peoples remain strongly practised.