Ethiopia’s flag is a horizontal tricolor of green, yellow, and red.
The Ethiopian flag places green at the top, yellow in the middle, and red at the bottom. The current national design also carries a golden pentagram on a blue disc in the center. In everyday descriptions, the flag is often identified by its distinctive green-yellow-red arrangement even when the central emblem is omitted from simplified illustrations.
These colors have deep historical importance in Ethiopia and later became associated with Pan-African identity. Ethiopia’s modern tricolor was first adopted in 1897 under Emperor Menelik II, shortly after Ethiopia’s victory over Italy at the Battle of Adwa. The present emblem-bearing design was adopted in 1996 and modified in 2009.
The main trap is confusing the order with other African flags. Ghana uses red, yellow, and green horizontally and adds a black star. Guinea and Mali also use green, yellow, and red, but their stripes run vertically rather than horizontally. Ethiopia is the answer when the order is green-yellow-red across horizontal bands.