Pliny the Elder (Natural History (23-79AD)
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Pliny does not say anything about east Africa. There is however a small passage about taxes that needed to be paid in ancient times as well as a quiet accurate description on how pygmies (even today) hunt elephants that are worth knowing.
In his book over trees:
Herodotus assigned it (the ebony tree) to Ethiopia. And said that every three years the Ethiopians had to pay as tribune to the king of Persia 100 billets of timber of that tree, together with gold and ivory. Moreover, I must not forget (since that author had put it down expressly) that the Ethiopians in the same way were bound to pay twenty great and massive elephant teeth. So highly was ivory estimated then, namely in the year 310 after the founding of Rome.
In his book over animals:
The Troglodites, a people bounding upon Ethiopia, who live only upon Elephants flesh, use to clime trees that be near the tracks of the elephants, from there (letting all the heard to pas quietly under the trees) they leap down upon the buttocks of the last with his left hand takes fast hold upon his tail, and puts his feet and legs fast in the flank of the left side, and so hanging and bending backward with his body, he cuts the ham-strings of one of his legs with an axe or knife that he has for that purpose in his right hand: which done, the Elephant begins to slack his pace, by reason that one of his legs is wounded: the man then jumps to get away and for a farewell he cuts likewise the other ham: and all this does in a trice with wonderful agility and nimbleness. Others have a safer way than this, but it is more subtle and deceitful: they set or stick in the ground a great way off, mighty great bows ready bent; to hold these fast, they chose certain tall, lusty, and strong fellows, and as many others as sufficient as they, to draw with all their might the said bows against the other, and so they let flee against the poor Elephants as they pass by, javelins and bore-spears, as if they shot shafts, and stick them therewith, and so follow them by their blood. Of these beasts, the females are much more fearful than the male kind.
Note this passage is important because it is the only indication in literature that the hunter-gatherers before the coming of the Bantu lived in a much larger part of Africa
The following two verses(108, 172) are taken from book 6; the geography of Asia.
They are important because in it he uses the word Azanium (Azania). He is one of the only few classical authors to use the name.
108 Yet it divides into two gulfs. One goes up to Persia, circumnavigated in 25 (days) as Erastosthenes teaches, on the other side is Arabia situated at 15 (degrees) longitude. That gulf in the back is called Arabico. There flows the ocean that brings you to Azania. Persia is entered after another 4 (days)....
172 By the Sea of Azania, there is the promontory in which Hippalum is said to be, lake Mandalum, the island Colocasitis and many more, in a sea with endless turtles. The fortified town of Sace, the island Daphnidis, the fortified town of Aduliton, which serves those Egyptians exiled by decree of the ruler.
The places in verse 172 are easy to locate, Ptolemy mentions Adulis as well Daphnine island , the Periplus mentions Adulis and lots of small islands around it. We can conclude that for Pliny the north-eastern border of the Sea of Azania includes The gulf of Aden as well as the southern part of the Red Sea.