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COUNTRY: ETHIOPIA
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.
Ethiopia remains one of Africa's poorest states, with a very low income per capita and a population that is almost two-thirds illiterate.
Many Ethiopians continue to 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.
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