Gateway for Red Sea shipping, Djibouti lies in northeast Africa. A French territory until 1977, France's naval base and garrison generate about half of the country's income. The capital of this resource-poor nation profits as a regional banking center with a free port and modern air facilities. Terminus of the railway from Addis Ababa, it handles much of Ethiopia's trade. A civil war in the early 1990s ended with a power-sharing agreement between the two main ethnic groups, the Issa of Somali origin and the Afar of Ethiopian origin.