Ethiopia Military 2021, CIA World Factbook

Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF): Ground Forces, Ethiopian Air Force (Ye Ityopya Ayer Hayl, ETAF) (2020)

note(s): in January 2020 the Ethiopian Government announced it had re-established a navy, which was disbanded in 1996; in March 2019 Ethiopia signed a defense cooperation agreement with France which stipulated that France would support the establishment of an Ethiopian navy, which will reportedly be based out of Djibouti

in 2018, Ethiopia established a Republican Guard for protecting senior officials; the Republican Guard is a military unit accountable to the Prime Minister

Military expenditures

0.7% of GDP (2019 est.)

0.7% of GDP (2018 est.)

0.7% of GDP (2017 est.)

0.7% of GDP (2016 est.)

0.7% of GDP (2015 est.)

Military and security service personnel strengths

information varies; approximately 140,000 active duty troops, including about 3,000 Air Force personnel (no personnel numbers available for the newly-established Navy) (2020)

Military equipment inventories and acquisitions

the ENDF's inventory is comprised mostly of Soviet-era equipment from the 1970s; since 2010, Russia and Ukraine are the leading suppliers of largely second-hand weapons and equipment to the ENDF, followed by China and Hungary; Ethiopia has a modest industrial defense base centered on small arms and production of armored vehicles (2020)

Military deployments

estimated 10,000 Somalia (4,500 for AMISOM); 800 Sudan (UNAMID); 3,200 Sudan (UNISFA); 2,100 South Sudan (UNMISS) (Jan 2021)

Military service age and obligation

18 years of age for voluntary military service; no compulsory military service, but the military can conduct callups when necessary and compliance is compulsory (2019)

Military - note

each of the nine states has a regional and/or a "special" paramilitary security force that report to regional civilian authorities; local militias operate across the country in loose and varying coordination with these regional security and police forces, the Ethiopian Federal Police (EFP), and the Ethiopian military; the EFP reports to the Ministry of Peace, which was created in October of 2018

Ethiopia faces considerable ethnic violence in some regions, including Oromo, where the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) has conducted numerous attacks targeting the Amhara ethnic group; the OLA, assessed to number in the low thousands, broke off from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an opposition party that spent years in exile but was allowed to return to Ethiopia after ABIY took office in 2018

in November 2020, the Ethiopian Government launched military operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – an ethnically-based political entity that runs the Tigray regional government and had its own paramilitary security forces; the TPLF had increasingly challenged the authority of the Federal Government; the TPLF’s security forces date back to the 1980s when it led the guerrilla movement that brought the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front coalition to power; during the fighting, the Ethiopian Government allowed ethnic Amhara and Afar militias to attack the TLPF (now merged into the Tigray Defense Forces, TDF); in addition, it invited Eritrean military forces to join in the fighting; Ethiopian and Eritrean military forces, as well as ethnic militias, have all been accused of committing atrocities against Tigrayan civilians during the fighting, which continued into 2021

NOTE: The information regarding Ethiopia on this page is re-published from the 2021 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and other sources. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Ethiopia 2021 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Ethiopia 2021 should be addressed to the CIA or the source cited on each page.