Ethiopia is not a very free country. It ranks low on measures of economic and political freedom. It also is fairly poor: Incomes in Ethiopia are 86% lower than the world average.
But it is a good neighbor. It has approved a $738 million loan to its more backward neighbor, South Sudan, to build a cross-border highway. That highway will help South Sudan, which was rated the least-developed country on Earth in 2021.
Freedom House ranks Ethiopia as “unfree”, giving it a score of only 20% (10 out of 40 for political rights, and 10 out of 60 for civil liberties, and 27 out of 100 for internet freedom). The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom classifies Ethiopia as “repressed,” and ranks it a dismal 156th out of 184 countries.
But Ethiopia helps neighboring countries. “Ethiopia also provides electricity to Sudan, and after the Sudanese civil war broke out Sudan was unable to pay for it but Ethiopia continued to provide them electricity.”
The electricity has kept some Sudanese hospitals running even as over 100,000 Sudanese civilians have been killed due to indiscriminate shelling and gunfire in Sudan’s civil war. Most of Sudan’s 50 million people are experiencing severe hunger.
600,000 people have fled from Sudan into South Sudan to escape Sudan’s ongoing civil war — even though South Sudan is desperately poor and had a civil war of its own from 2013 to 2020, which drove more than 2 million people from South Sudan to neighboring countries.
The civil war in Sudan is causing a famine that researchers predict will kill six to ten million people by 2027.
Ethiopia also sent troops into neighboring Somalia to try to crush the violent, anti-American Al-Shabaab insurgency that has caused so much trouble and death in Somalia.
Ethiopia had a civil war of its own in 2020-2022. Although that civil war was largely localized to its Tigray region, it still killed as many as 500,000 people, most of whom were either killed by Ethiopian troops, or died of starvation exacerbated by government-imposed blockades on the flow of relief aid. (Ethiopia has over 125 million people. At least 7 million lived in the Tigray region).
South Sudan is a worse neighbor than Ethiopia is. In March, South Sudan’s government banned the transport of food and fuel to Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions, which are desperately poor and hungry due to Sudan’s civil war.
