For the past decade Ethiopia has boasted of one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, welcoming billions of dollars in foreign direct investment from the U.S. and China and lifting more than 20 million people out of poverty.
Now, a monthlong civil war, coronavirus lockdowns and historic locust infestations have left the once-golden economy stumbling, as it grapples with one of Africa’s most perilous debt loads, soaring inflation and the risk of a protracted insurgency.