The population of Ethiopia it includes people belonging to different ethnic and linguistic lineages, who settled in the country at different times. Leaving aside the most ancient, which currently represent only a marginal or residual fraction, the strictly Ethiopian people, speaking Cushitic languages, are essentially the tribes known with the generic name of Sidamo, to which only much later (16th century) added the numerous tribes of the Oromo (or Galla), constituting the most recent and numerically more consistent Cushitic wave. In the South-East, another large Cushitic group is made up of the Somalis (area of ​​Harar, Ogaden). The current populations speaking Semitic languages, Christianized, settled in absolute prevalence on the central-northern plateau, include the Amhara (whose idiom, Amharic, is the official language), who historically have played an important role in the process of formation of the state. and still prevail in public offices, and the Tigrayans, settled in a region, the Tigray, which for centuries was the fulcrum of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. For Ethiopia 2009, please check hyperrestaurant.com.

Only in 1984 did the Ethiopian state carry out the first official census, which revealed a population of 42,020,000 residents, which in 2009, according to an estimate, rose to over 85 million. The natural demographic dynamic is very lively: with a birth rate estimated at 43 ‰ and despite a still high mortality (11.8 ‰), Ethiopia it is definitely one of the countries with a strong population growth, far from the mature stages of the demographic transition process.

The density, compared to an average value of about 75 residents ^/km ², shows sharp contrasts in the various regions according to the altitude: on the highlands, which occupy about half of the country, 9/10 of the population is concentrated. On the other hand, the eastern and northern lowlands, corresponding to the desert areas (and to the sub-desert areas of pastoral nomadism), have densities of less than 5 residents ^/ km ². The structure and forms of the settlement have undergone profound changes, especially since the new political-economic course of the 1970s. The development of industrial and commercial activities has triggered a process of urbanization from traditional villages, especially towards the capital. Internal population displacements were also caused by the conflicts that have affected some regions (Eritrea, which became independent in 1993, Ogaden, Tigrai) and by natural disasters (in particular droughts, with the consequent famines) that have repeatedly hit the country in the last decades of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, a strategy of concentrating the rural population in new modern villages was adopted, built thanks to massive international aid, which has led to the transfer of nearly 4 million people, in part also over great distances, from the northern areas to the central and south-western ones. This strategy, justified by the government of the time with the need to modernize agricultural activities and provide better living conditions for farmers, was instead contested by the opposition as an attempt to weaken the resistance of the autonomist groups.