Tourism in Ethiopia accounted for 5. 5% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006, having barely increased 2% over the previous year. The government is proving its commitment and willingness to develop tourism through a number of initiatives. Tourism is a featured component of Ethiopia's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) that aims to combat poverty and encourage economic development.
Climate
Sunshine is virtually guaranteed. There is a rainy season between the middle of June and the end of September, but for the rest of the year clear skies reign, with temperatures never generally rising above the late twenties. Only on the hot and humid lowland edges of western, eastern and southern Ethiopia do temperatures creep above 30°C.
Language
There are 90 individual languages of Ethiopia according to Ethnologue[1] (some 77 according to the 1994 census). Most belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family (Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic), with Nilo-Saharan languages also spoken by the nation's Nilotic ethnic minorities.
Charles A. Ferguson proposed the Ethiopian Language Area, characterized by shared grammatical and phonological features in 1976. This language area (sprachbund) includes the Afro-Asiatic languages of Ethiopia, not the Nilo-Saharan languages. In 2000, Mauro Tosco questioned the validity of Ferguson's original proposal. There is still no agreement among scholars on this point, but Tosco has at least weakened Ferguson's original claim.
