Ethiopia Military 2022, CIA World Factbook

Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF): Ground Forces, Ethiopian Air Force (Ye Ityopya Ayer Hayl, ETAF); Ministry of Peace: Ethiopian Federal Police (EFP) (2022)

note 1: in 2020 the Ethiopian Government announced it had re-established a navy, which had been 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 would reportedly be based out of Djibouti

note 2: in 2018, Ethiopia established a Republican Guard military unit responsible to the Prime Minister for protecting senior officials

note 3: each of the states have regional and/or a "special" paramilitary security and police forces that report to regional civilian authorities and operate separately from federal forces; local militias operate across the country in loose and varying coordination with these regional security and police forces, the ENDF, and the EFP; there have been some calls for these regional paramilitary forces to be incorporated into the ENDF and EFP

Military expenditures

0.5% of GDP (2021 est.)

0.5% of GDP (2020 est.)

0.6% of GDP (2019 est.) (approximately $970 million)

0.6% of GDP (2018 est.) (approximately $950 million)

0.7% of GDP (2017 est.) (approximately $930 million)

Military and security service personnel strengths

information varies; prior to the 2020-21 Tigray conflict, approximately 150,000 active duty troops, including about 3,000 Air Force personnel (no personnel numbers available for the newly-established Navy) (2022)

Military equipment inventories and acquisitions

the ENDF's inventory is comprised mostly of Soviet-era equipment from the 1970s; since 2010, the ENDF has received arms from a variety of countries, with China, Russia, and Ukraine as the leading suppliers; Ethiopia has a modest industrial defense base centered on small arms and production of armored vehicles (2021)

Military service age and obligation

18-22 years of age for voluntary military service (although the military may, when necessary, recruit a person more than 22 years old); no compulsory military service, but the military can conduct callups when necessary and compliance is compulsory (2022)

note: in November 2021, the Ethiopian Government issued a nationwide state of emergency that enabled officials to order military-age citizens to undergo training and accept military duty in support of the Tigray conflict; the order also recalled retired military officers to active duty

Military deployments

5-10,000 Somalia (4,500 for ATMIS; the remainder under a bilateral agreement with Somalia; note - bilateral figures are prior to the conflict with Tigray); 250 Sudan (UNISFA); 1,475 South Sudan (UNMISS) (2022)

Military - note

since November 2020, the Government of Ethiopia has been engaged in a protracted military conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the former governing party of the Tigray Region; the government deemed a TPLF attack on Ethiopia military forces as a domestic terrorism incident and launched a military offensive in response; the TPLF asserted that its actions were self-defense in the face of planned Ethiopian Government action to remove it from the provincial government; the Ethiopian Government sent large elements of the ENDF into Tigray to remove the TPLF and invited militia and paramilitary forces from the states of Afar and Amara, as well as the military forces of Eritrea, to assist; the fighting included heavy civilian and military casualties with widespread abuses reported; in March 2022, the Ethiopian Government declared a truce to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into the Tigray region; the TPLF reciprocated with a truce of its own; however, fighting between the TPLF and the Ethiopian Government resumed in August 2022; the two sides agreed to another cease-fire in November 2022

the military forces of the Tigray regional government are known as the Tigray Defense Force (TDF); the TDF is comprised of state paramilitary forces, local militia, and troops that defected from the ENDF; it was reported to have up to 250,000 fighters at the start of the conflict

in 2022, the ENDF was also engaged in counterinsurgency operations against anti-government militants in several other states; the largest was in Oromya (Oromia) against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA; aka Shene), an insurgent group that claimed to be fighting for greater autonomy for the Oromo, Ethiopia's largest ethnic group; the OLA was a member of a coalition of eight anti-government factions known as the United Front of Ethiopia and Confederalist Forces (UFEFCF); formed in 2021, the UFEFCF included the TPLF, as well as rebel groups of variable sizes from several regions of the country; the OLA has also clashed with ethnic militias (aka Fano) from the neighboring state of Amara

in July 2022, militants from the Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shabaab launched an incursion into Ethiopia's Somali (Sumale) region, attacking villages and security forces; the Ethiopian Government claimed that regional security forces killed hundreds of Shabaab fighters and subsequently deployed additional ENDF troops into Somalia’s Gedo region to prevent further such incursions (2022)

NOTE: The information regarding Ethiopia on this page is re-published from the 2022 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and other sources. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Ethiopia 2022 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Ethiopia 2022 should be addressed to the CIA or the source cited on each page.