Ethiopia in the context of "Bench language"

A landlocked country is a country that has no territory connected to an ocean or whose coastlines lie solely on endorheic basins. Currently, there are 44 landlocked countries, two of them doubly landlocked due to being surrounded by other landlocked nations (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan), and three landlocked de facto states in the world. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country, Kyrgyzstan is the farthest landlocked country from any ocean, and Ethiopia is the world's most populous landlocked country.

Generally, being landlocked creates political and economic disadvantages that having access to international waters would avoid. For this reason, nations large and small throughout history have fought to gain access to open waters, even at great expense in wealth, bloodshed, and political capital.

Ethiopian historiography includes the ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern disciplines of recording the history of Ethiopia, including both native and foreign sources. The roots of Ethiopian historical writing can be traced back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum (c. AD 100 – c. 940). These early texts were written in either the Ethiopian Ge'ez script or the Greek alphabet, and included a variety of mediums such as manuscripts and epigraphic inscriptions on monumental stelae and obelisks documenting contemporary events. The writing of history became an established genre in Ethiopian literature during the early Solomonic dynasty (1270–1974). In this period, written histories were usually in the form of royal biographies and dynastic chronicles, supplemented by hagiographic literature and universal histories in the form of annals. Christian mythology became a linchpin of medieval Ethiopian historiography due to works such as the Orthodox Kebra Nagast. This reinforced the genealogical traditions of Ethiopia's Solomonic dynasty rulers, which asserted that they were descendants of Solomon, the legendary King of Israel.

Ethiopian historiographic literature has been traditionally dominated by Christian theology and the chronology of the Bible. There was also considerable influence from Muslim, pagan and foreign elements from within the Horn of Africa and beyond. Diplomatic ties with Christendom were established in the Roman era under Ethiopia's first Christian king, Ezana of Axum, in the 4th century AD, and were renewed in the Late Middle Ages with embassies traveling to and from medieval Europe. Building on the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman historical writings about Ethiopia, medieval European chroniclers made attempts to describe Ethiopia, its people, and religious faith in connection to the mythical Prester John, who was viewed as a potential ally against Islamic powers. Ethiopian history and its peoples were also mentioned in works of medieval Islamic historiography and even Chinese encyclopedias, travel literature, and official histories.

The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) are the military of the Republic of Singapore, responsible for protecting and defending the security interests and the sovereignty of the country. A component of the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF), the armed forces have four service branches: the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Digital and Intelligence Service. An integrated force, it is the most capable, robust, technologically sophisticated and powerful military in the Southeast Asia region. The SAF is headed by the chief of defence force, appointed by the President, on the advice of the Cabinet.

Since its inception, the SAF has been involved in various operations, both domestically and abroad. These include peacekeeping missions in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Timor Leste as well as disaster relief operations in various countries, including the 1970 Bhola cyclone, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, 2008 Sichuan earthquake, April 2015 Nepal earthquake, Hurricane Harvey, among others. In addition, the SAF has assisted the United Nations to oversee and supervise the electoral process in countries such as Cambodia, Ethiopia, Namibia and South Africa.

The geography of North Africa has been reasonably well known among Europeans since classical antiquity in Greco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa (the Maghreb) was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt was considered part of Asia.

European exploration of sub-Saharan Africa begins with the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, pioneered by the Kingdom of Portugal under Henry the Navigator. The Cape of Good Hope was first reached by Bartolomeu Dias on 12 March 1488, opening the important sea route to India and the Far East, but European exploration of Africa itself remained very limited during the 16th and 17th centuries. The European powers were content to establish trading posts along the coast while they were actively exploring and colonizing the New World. Exploration of the interior of Africa was thus mostly left to the Muslim slave traders, who in tandem with the Muslim conquest of Sudan established far-reaching networks and supported the economy of a number of Sahelian kingdoms during the 15th to 18th centuries.

Northeast Africa, or Northeastern Africa, or Northern East Africa as it was known in the past, encompasses the countries of Africa situated in and around the Red Sea. The region is intermediate between North Africa and East Africa, and encompasses the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia), as well as Sudan, Libya,and Egypt in addition to, although rarely, South Sudan. The region has a very long history of habitation with fossil finds from the early hominids to modern human and is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions of the world, being the home to many civilizations and located on an important trade route that connects multiple continents; Gamal Abdel Nasser, the second president of Egypt (which is the most northeastern African country) once described it as "the crossroads of the world, the thoroughfare of its traders and passageway of its armies."

Early modern human, or anatomically modern human, are terms used to distinguish Homo sapiens (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans, from extinct archaic human species. This distinction is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe. Among the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 233,000 to 196,000 years ago, the Florisbad Skull found at the Florisbad archaeological and paleontological site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago.

Extinct species of the genus Homo include Homo erectus (extant from roughly 2,000,000 to 100,000 years ago) and a number of other species (by some authors considered subspecies of either H. sapiens or H. erectus). The divergence of the lineage leading to H. sapiens out of ancestral H. erectus (or an intermediate species such as Homo antecessor) is estimated to have occurred in Africa roughly 500,000 years ago. The earliest fossil evidence of early modern humans appears in Africa around 300,000 years ago, with the earliest genetic splits among modern people, according to some evidence, dating to around the same time. Sustained archaic human admixture with modern humans is known to have taken place both in Africa and (following the recent Out-Of-Africa expansion) in Eurasia, between about 100,000 and 30,000 years ago.

The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is an important river in Africa that flows northwards into the Mediterranean Sea. At roughly 6,650 km (4,130 mi) long, it is among the longest rivers in the world. Its drainage basin covers eleven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt. It plays an important economic role in the economy of these nations, and it is the primary water source for South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt.

The Nile has two major tributaries: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile, being the longer, is traditionally considered to be the headwaters, while the Blue Nile actually contributes 80% of the water and silt below the confluence of the two. The White Nile begins at Lake Victoria and flows through Uganda and South Sudan, while the Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet at the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

The following is a list of the 100 largest cities in Africa by urban population using the most recent official estimate. This reflects only cities located geographically in Africa including related islands.

Somali literature is the literature used by the ethnic Somalis of Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Yemen, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the southeast, and South Sudan to the south. Sudan has a population of 50 million people as of 2024 and occupies 1,886,068 square kilometres (728,215 square miles), making it Africa's third-largest country by area. Sudan's capital and most populous city is Khartoum.

The area that is now Sudan witnessed the Khormusan (c. 40000–16000 BC), Halfan culture (c. 20500–17000 BC), Sebilian (c. 13000–10000 BC), Qadan culture (c. 15000–5000 BC), the war of Jebel Sahaba, the earliest known war in the world, around 11500 BC, A-Group culture (c. 3800–3100 BC), Kingdom of Kerma (c. 2500–1500 BC), the Egyptian New Kingdom (c. 1500–1070 BC), and the Kingdom of Kush (c. 785 BC – 350 AD). After the fall of Kush, the Nubians formed the three Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia. Between the 14th and 15th centuries, most of Sudan was gradually settled by Arab nomads. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, central and eastern Sudan were dominated by the Funj sultanate, while Darfur ruled the west and the Ottomans the east.