Eritrea

Eritrea is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti. The capital is Asmara which is also the country’s largest city. Located on the Rea Sea, Eritrea’s name is an Italianised version of Mare Erythraeum, latin for “Red Sea”. The coastline, forming the northeastern edge of the country, extends for around 600 miles from Cape Kasar in the north to the Strait of Mandeb in the south.

The landscape is subject to a variety of climatic conditions. The highlands, where Asmara is located, are relatively cool, whereas the lowlands, including the Danakil Depression and ports on the coast such as Massawa, are some of the driest and hottest places on earth, regularly reaching temperatures of 50°C.

Economy

Agriculture is the most important sector of Eritrea’s economy, providing a livelihood for 80% of the population. The main forms of agricultural activity are small-scale cultivation and traditional pastoralism. A large portion of Eritrea’s exports are produced in the agriculture industry. In addition to food and animals, fish from the Red Sea also account for a significant portion of the country’s exports. Eritrea is prone to severe droughts which alongside prolonged periods of conflict has consistently had an adverse effect on the country’s agricultural activity and economy.

Ethnic groups and languages

With a population of 6.4 million (as of 2025), Eritrea is home to several ethno-linguistic groups with their own cultural traditions and languages, all belonging to the Semitic, Cushitic and Nilo-Saharan language families. There are no official languages in Eritrea as all languages adopted in the country were recognised as equal under the 1997 Constitution.

The two major indigenous languages in Eritrea are Tigrinya, spoken by the Tigray people who make up half of the country’s population, and Tigre, the dialect of the Tigre people who inhabit the northernmost part of the Eritrean plateau, as well as the eastern and western lowlands, and constitute nearly one-third of the country’s population. Tigrinya and Tigre are written in the same script and are both related to the ancient Semitic Geʿez language.

The remaining minority languages are: Arabic, spoken by the Rashaida who occupy the northern hills; Saho, adopted by Saho pastoralists residing in the coastal strip south of Massawa and eastern flanks of the plateau; Afar, the dialect of the Afars people (also known as the Danakil) who live on the southern part of the coastal region and across the borders in Djibouti and Ethiopia; Bedawiyet, spoken by Beja pastoralists who predominantly live in the western plain and across the border in Sudan; Bilen, a Cushitic language adopted by Bilen people occupying the northern plateau; and Kunama and Nara, Nilotic languages that are the dialect of the Kunama and Nara groups who live in the west. Italian, English and Amharic are also spoken throughout Eritrea, a legacy of the Italian, British and Ethiopian colonisations of the country in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Religion

The two dominant religions in Eritrea are Christianity and Islam. Around one-half of the population is Christian, the majority of whom are members of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The rest of the Christian population are primarily Roman Catholic with a small number of Protestants, the latter of which was introduced to Eritrea by European missionaries during Italy’s colonial rule of the country from the 1880s.

The other half of the Eritrean population follow Islam, introduced to the country after its rise in Arabia and subsequent spread throughout the lowlands of the Horn of Africa from the seventh century onwards. The majority of people who inhabit the eastern coast and western plain of Eritrea as well as the northernmost part of the plateau identify as Muslim.

Colonisation and Independence

Eritrea has been ruled by a number of foreign powers throughout its history, most notably Italy, Britain and Ethiopia. The country’s colonisation history dates back to the sixteenth century when Ottoman Turks conquered and occupied the Dahlak Archipelago and Massawa port to gain access to the Red Sea coast, a strategically important trade route of the time. It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century when Eritrea was subject to another foreign invasion; in 1865, Egypt, as part of their campaign to occupy Sudan, obtained Massawa from the Ottoman Turks and began to conquer other lowlands areas of Eritrea. Egyptian forces continued to push further inland until they were defeated by Ethiopian forces in 1875.

The late 1800s also marked the beginning stages of Italy’s colonisation of Eritrea. Between 1869 and 1880, the Italian Rubattino Navigation Company began to purchase stretches of the Red Sea coast from the local Afar sultan, seizing control of ports that promised access to the gold, coffee and enslaved people sold by traders in the Ethiopian highlands to the south. These acquisitions were transferred to the Italian state in 1882, leading to a military invasion of Eritrea in 1885 that turned the country into an Italian colony ruled by Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Under Italian rule, Eritrea’s urban sector majorly developed. Asmara was established as the capital city, a number of small towns were built on the plateau, the ports of Assab and Massawa were modernised and the construction of roads and rail began to link the various regions of the colony. The arrival of tens of thousands of Italian nationals, who settled in the developing urban areas, also brought a new culture and language to the country. By the end of the colonial period, Eritrea had the largest proportion of urban residents in the Horn of Africa. In the countryside, a large portion of Eritrea’s most fertile agricultural land was reserved for use by Italian farmers to grow produce for the urban market including vegetables, fruit, cotton, sisal, bananas, tobacco and coffee. The appropriation of land for Italian use created a shortage of land for Eritrean farmers, causing many to move to the cities to seek employment. Opportunities for Eritreans were far and few between; in the colonial service they were only permitted to work as labourers and serve as soldiers as part of Italy’s military campaign to colonise East Africa.

In 1941, Eritrea was freed from Italian fascist rule by British and Ethiopian forces. The country remained under British administration as a United Nations (UN) trust territory until 1952 when, despite a growing Eritrean national movement, the UN General Assembly voted to make Eritrea a federal component of Ethiopia.

During the 1950s, Ethiopian federate control of Eritrea became very oppressive. Leaders of Eritrean national campaigns were harassed until they moved abroad and attempts to form autonomous organisations and independence movements were suppressed. Political parties were banned in 1955, trade unions were banned in 1958, and in 1959 Ethiopian law was imposed. Ethnic groups and languages in Eritrea also came under attack; Muslims were shunned from public employment, and the Tigrinya and Arabic languages were banned in state education, replaced by Amharic which at the time was the official language of Ethiopia. Eritrea’s economy also deflated during the period of federation with Ethiopia, forcing thousands of Eritreans to emigrate to the Middle East in search of employment.

Ethiopia tightened their control over Eritrea in 1962 when Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie dissolved the federation and formally annexed Eritrea, declaring the country the fourteenth province of the Ethiopian Empire. This led to a revival of nationalist agitation in Eritrea in the early 1960s. The Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), established in 1960, began a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Ethiopian Empire in the mid-1960s that lasted for over 30 years. Numerous Eritrean liberation and rebel movements including the ELF, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fought the authoritarian regimes of Haile Selassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam on a scale that was unprecedented at the time in sub-Saharan Africa.

The final act of war occurred in 1991 when liberation fighters captured Asmara and defeated the Ethiopian army. EPLF assumed complete control of Eritrea, forming a provisional government and liberating the Eritrean population from Ethiopian control. In a referendum held two years later in April 1993, Eritreans voted overwhelmingly for independence. Isaias Afwerki, the secretary general of the EPLF, was made president of a transitional government and proclaimed Eritrea officially independent on 24 May 1993. A metal statue of a pair of giant sandals stands today in Asmara to represent Eritrea’s decades-long struggle for independence and to honour the courageous efforts of the independence fighters, whose main footwear were rubber sandals made from old tyres.

References

“Eritrea country profile”, BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13349078 (Accessed: 3 March 2026).

Last, G. (2026) “Eritrea”, Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/place/Eritrea (Accessed: 4 March 2026).

Swift, R. (2009) “Eritrea – Country Profile (2009)”, New Internationalist. Available at: https://newint.org/columns/country/2009/12/01/eritrea (Accessed: 3 March 2026).

“Toponymic Fact File – Eritrea”, Permanent Committee on Geographical Names. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6672f1e9c087fbe40855ce76/Eritrea_Toponymic_Factfile.pdf (Accessed: 3 March 2026).