Africa · Eastern Africa

Ethiopia

17 cities in the atlas · 15 airports with scheduled flights

Plan a trip to Ethiopia Ask our visa desk

Omo River · Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Capital: Addis Ababa
Currency: ETB; Ethiopian Birr
Local time: East Africa TimeUTC+03:00
Calling code: +251
Driving: On the right
Plugs: Type C, E, F, J and L

Facts

Ethiopia in figures

From named datasets: GeoNames, CLDR, the World Bank and Wikidata. Each is credited at the foot of the page.

Capital: Addis Ababa
Currency: Ethiopian Birr ETBToday's indicative rate: ETB 100 ≈ USD 0.619Indicative, from the day's reference rates; a bank or card will charge its own.
Languages: Official: AmharicSpoken: Amharic, English, Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali and Sidamo
Time zones: East Africa TimeUTC+03:00
Calling code: +251
Driving: On the right
Plugs: Type C, E, F, J and L220 V · 50 HzAs recorded in Wikidata.
Emergency numbers: 907ambulance911general emergency939fire991policeAs recorded in Wikidata. Check them locally on arrival; they are not the only safety information you need.
Population: 135,472,051 (2025, World Bank)
Area: 1,127,127 km²
Internet domain: .et
Land borders: Djibouti Eritrea Kenya Somalia South Sudan Sudan

When to go

Climate across Ethiopia

In September to June, more than half of the 10 cities with figures in Ethiopia have a mean high between 18°C and 32°C and under 150 mm of rain.

Mild to warm and dry
Mild to warm, humid or showery
Hot
Cool
Wet
Cold

The main cities, month by month
City	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Addis Ababa	24°	25°	25°	24°	25°	24°	20°	20°	20°	21°	22°	22°
Aksum	27°	29°	31°	31°	31°	29°	25°	24°	27°	28°	27°	26°
Dire Dawa	26°	29°	30°	29°	29°	29°	27°	26°	27°	27°	26°	26°
Mek'ele	24°	26°	27°	28°	29°	28°	24°	24°	25°	24°	24°	23°
Gonder	27°	29°	30°	30°	28°	25°	21°	21°	23°	24°	25°	26°
Bahir Dar	26°	29°	29°	29°	28°	24°	21°	21°	22°	23°	24°	25°
Nazrēt	27°	29°	30°	28°	29°	29°	26°	25°	26°	27°	26°	26°
Awasa	23°	25°	25°	23°	22°	20°	19°	19°	20°	21°	21°	22°
Jijiga	26°	29°	29°	28°	28°	27°	26°	25°	26°	27°	26°	26°
Warder	33°	35°	36°	35°	33°	33°	32°	34°	35°	33°	32°	33°
Cities good for going, of 10	9	9	9	8	8	7	4	4	6	9	9	9

Mean daily highs, modelled for an area about 50 km across: NASA POWER climatology, 2001–2020. A cell's swatch says what the month is like (key above).

On the map

Where Ethiopia is

The dashed box is the extent of the country's main landmass, from Natural Earth; outlying islands fall outside it. The dots are the cities with pages of their own.

Land borders

Cities

Cities in Ethiopia

All 17 places in the atlas: capitals, cities of 300,000 people or more, the places its airports serve, and the ones we have written guides to.

Smaller places with an airport · 7

Airports

Airports in Ethiopia

Airports with scheduled flights and an IATA code, from OurAirports.

Large airports

Medium airports · 11

Photographs

Ethiopia in pictures

Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, each credited to its author, with its licence.

Addis Ababa
Photo: DaneyWiki · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Visas and entry

Entry rules depend on your passport and change often, so this page does not state them. Check the destination government's official immigration website, or ask our visa desk to check your case for you.

Ask our visa desk

Plan it

Plan a trip to Ethiopia

Tell us where in Ethiopia, when and who is travelling, and a person puts the flights, the stays and the rest into one quote.

Plan a trip to Ethiopia All countries

Sources for this page

All sources and licences

GeoNames — Place data © GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0.
OurAirports — Airport data from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain.
NASA POWER (Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources), Climatology API v2 — These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science/Applied Science Program.
Wikidata — Facts from Wikidata (wikidata.org), CC0.
Wikimedia Commons — Each photograph's author and licence are printed beside it.
Unicode CLDR 48.2.2 (cldr-json) — Unicode CLDR data, © Unicode, Inc., Unicode License v3.
Natural Earth v5.1.2, 1:10m admin-0 map units — Made with Natural Earth. Licence: Public domain
World Bank, World Development Indicators: Population, total (SP.POP.TOTL) — Population: World Bank, World Development Indicators (SP.POP.TOTL), CC BY 4.0.