Nationwide electric blackout hits Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia 

Ethiopia experienced a nationwide power blackout late Saturday night, around 6 p.m. local time, with restoration efforts underway, authorities announced.

The Ethiopian Electric Power Authority attributed the outage to "system instability" and urged the public to remain calm as teams work to restore electricity across the country.

This comes months after Ethiopia recovered from a five-hour power outage on March 28, which left most regions without electricity, except for Bahir Dar and its surroundings in the Amhara region.

The cause of that earlier blackout has not yet been disclosed by authorities.