Factbox: Facts about Ethiopia

(Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's ruling party has won a national election, according to provisional results announced by the electoral board on Monday.

The victory would extend his time in office to nearly 25 years.

Here are some facts about Ethiopia:

THE COUNTRY:

* Ethiopia is sub-Saharan Africa's second most-populous country after Nigeria with a population of nearly 83 million and is as large as France and Spain combined. Most people are small-scale farmers with more than 80 percent of the population living in the countryside.

* After the discovery of a 3-million-year-old skeleton named "Lucy" in 1974, Ethiopians started to call their country the cradle of humanity. Then "Ardi," a 4.4 million-year-old hominoid, was found in 1994, reinforcing their claim.

* Ethiopians are fiercely proud of the fact their country is one of only two in Africa, along with Liberia, never to have been colonized, except for an Italian occupation from 1936-1941.

* The lack of foreign interference has given Ethiopia unique languages, traditional dress, music and foods.

* Amesegenalehu -- the Amharic word for Thank You -- is one of the longest words used to express gratitude in any language.

THE ECONOMY:

* Many Ethiopians express frustration with their country's constant depiction in the international media as a famine-ridden nation. They say there is more to Ethiopia than that and point to a government safety net system for the poorest people which should ensure starvation on the scale of the infamous 1984 famine that provoked Live Aid will never be repeated.

* The government says the economy has grown at an average of more than 10 percent over seven years, which would make it the fastest growing non-oil producer in Africa.

* The vast country is still desperately poor, however, and is overwhelmingly reliant on agricultural exports. Ethiopia earned $1.5 billion from such exports in 2008/09.

* Chief among exports is coffee, which accounted for 60 percent of its foreign exchange revenue in the 2007/2008 season, when it earned more than $525 million from exports of 170,888 tonnes of mostly high quality arabica beans.

* The country prides itself as a birthplace of the crop. Some 15 million smallholder farmers grow coffee beans, mostly in forested, mist-shrouded highlands in the remote west.

* State-owned carrier Ethiopian Airlines is one of the most successful in Africa and flies to more African destinations than any other airline.

* Ethiopia has a burgeoning diaspora, with many living in Washington D.C. Some estimates put the number of Ethiopians living overseas at more than 1 million. The remittances they send home rival coffee as a source of hard currency.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:

* The Horn of Africa nation is often referred to as the key U.S. ally in the region. The land-locked country borders Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. The population is more than 50 percent Orthodox Christian and 40 percent Muslim and the government is avowedly secular.

* The United States, Britain and others see Ethiopia, with the biggest army in east Africa, as a bulwark against the rise of militant Islamism in the Horn of Africa.

* Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in 2006 and routed an Islamist group who had taken control of capital Mogadishu. They left at the start of 2009 after battling an insurgency but keep a close watch over the border.

* Ethiopia went to war with neighboring Eritrea from 1998-2000 over their border. Relations remain tense despite Eritrea once being part of Ethiopia.

* Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974 by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, a military dictator who imposed communist rule and killed hundreds of thousands of opponents in brutal "Red Terror" purges.

* Despite commanding east Africa's biggest army, Mengistu was overthrown in 1991 by a coalition of underdog rebel groups of which Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was a leader.

(Reporting by Barry Malone in Addis Ababa; Editing by David Clarke and David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)