MZANZI TRAVEL - ISSUE 3

Water falls in Ethiopia, Africa
Pascal RATEAU /www.shutterstock.com
Unlike its main Eastern African rivals, Kenya and Tanzania, this landlocked
country does not rely on palm-fringed beach holidays or safaris. Instead
it is promoting its ancient past and natural splendours, its 3,000 year-old
archaeological heritage, and centuries of unique social, religious, imperial and
cultural development.
Rebranding itself as the “Land of Origins”, and despite attracting close to a
million foreign tourists in 2015/16, the country is still unknown to many and
has a vast wealth of attractions just waiting to be discovered. It certainly is a
country of many original “firsts” and other unique claims.
Ancient monarchies
Ethiopia is one of the only African countries that never lost its independence,
defeating its would-be Italian colonisers in battle in the late 1800s. It is here
where some of the oldest evidence of anatomically modern humans who
were the first to walk upright, has been found. Scientists believe it is also
from this region that modern humans first migrated to the Middle East and
many parts of the world beyond, giving rise to the modern diversity of human
populations around the world.
Tracing its roots as a nation back to the 2nd millennium BC, Ethiopia was ruled
as a monarchy for most of its history, until its last monarch, Emperor Haile
Selassie, was overthrown in a Soviet-backed coup in 1974. Selassie is revered
as the returned messiah of the Bible by the global Rastafari movement. In turn
the communists were overthrown in 1991 and the country became a federal
democracy.
The landlocked country shares borders with Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan,
South Sudan and Kenya. It has a population of close to a 100 million, making it
the world’s most populous landlocked country and the second-most populous
nation on the African continent after Nigeria.
Emerging from the “Red Terror” of communist rule, its vibrant revival is
evident everywhere as cities are modernising, brand new highways and other
infrastructure are appearing across the country, and tourism is flourishing.
Meeting place of nations
The first Afroasiatic-speaking people lived here and established the ancient
civilisation that endures to this day. Ethiopia was the first independent African
member of the 20th-century League of Nations and its successor, the United
Nations, and a founding member of the Group of 24 (G-24), the Non-Aligned
Movement, G-77 and the Organisation of African Unity.
Its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa, which is also the seat of the African
Union, the Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the United
Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Aviation Training HQ, the
African Standby Force, and many global NGOs working in Africa.
It is also here, in a place called Kaffa, located in what was the medieval Kingdom
of Kaffa, that the coffee bean was first discovered, giving the world its favourite
breakfast hot drink. The country’s ancient Ge’ez script, also known as Ethiopic,
is one of the oldest alphabets still in use around the world today, as is the
Ethiopian calendar.
A slight majority of Ethiopians are Christians; around one-third are Muslims
with the oldest Muslim settlement in Africa found here; while Ethiopian Jews
are considered to be descendants of the Tribe of Dan, one of the Ten Lost
Tribes of the Jews (in the 1980s many of them relocated to Israel). And it is the
spiritual home of Rastafarians. Truly a meeting point of the major religions of
MZANZI TRAVEL| www.mzanzitravel.co.za|ISSUE 3 | 21