Welcome to LIA-Ethiopia!

“Ethiopia didn’t just blow my mind,” Bono, the Irish rock star once said after visiting an orphanage here. “It opened my mind.”

One of the poorest nations on earth, Ethiopia is frequently on the brink of humanitarian and political crisis due to war, famine, and corruption, as well as the negative influences of outside forces. Other countries have long used Ethiopia – whether during the Cold War or, more recently, the War on Terror – in their bids for power in the Horn of Africa.

Yet Ethiopia is unique among African states in that it was never colonized by Europeans. And Ethiopia is the birthplace of

coffee, home to “Lucy,” the oldest known fossilized human skeleton, and inheritor of one of the world’s most advanced ancient kingdoms. Ethiopia uses its own system for marking time. It utilizes a unique calendar comprised of 13 months.

And the potential for economic redevelopment is real here. Ethiopia experienced double-digit economic growth for several years following 2003. Some have called Ethiopia, with its cool and often rainy central and western highlands, Africa’s

breadbasket. But without the necessary infrastructure, capital, and leadership, the country’s agricultural sector continues to languish, even as Ethiopians depend so heavily upon deforested and overworked land for subsistence-level lifestyles.

Here two-thirds of all people are Christian (mostly Orthodox), and one-third are Muslim (though that figure is rising, especially in arid eastern Ethiopia). About 80 million people now live in Ethiopia.

Click on the image below to learn more about the work of LIA in this area.