GEOGRAPHY

Eritrea is located in North East Africa and includes the Dahlak Archipelago and other islands along the Red Sea coast. It is bordered by Sudan to the north and west, Ethiopia to the south, Djibouti to the south-east and the Red Sea to the north and north-east.
Eritrea covers (including the Dahlak archipelago) an area of 124,324 square kilometres. The country comprises a high plateau and a coastal plain. Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, has a population of 500,000 people.

PEOPLE

Eritrea has a population of 4 million. There are nine major ethnic groups in Eritrea who are part of three distinct linguistic families – the Cushitic (or Hamitic), the Semitic, and the Nilotic languages.The widely spoken native languages in Eritrea are the closely related semitic ones, the Tigrigna and Tigré. The main working languages are Tigrigna and Arabic. English is the medium of instruction from middle school level upwards. One in every five Eritreans live abroad.

HISTORY

Eritrea contained the main ports of the Aksumite empire, which governed the region, including modern-day Ethiopia, between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. Over the next 300 years, control of the territory was disputed between the Ottomans, Ethiopia, Egypt and Italy.

In 1889, a treaty between Italy and King Menilek of Ethiopia recognised Italian possession of Eritrea. The Italians were expelled by the British in 1941. After the departure of the British in 1951. Eritrea was merged into Ethiopia in a federal arrangement brokered by the UN in 1952 and wasincorporated fully into Ethiopia 10 years later. Eritrea then became one of the 14 provinces during the Ethiopian colonilaism.

From 1961 the Eritrean Liberation Front led the fight gainst Ethiopian colonial rule. After thirty years of struggle, the EPLF finally expelled Ethiopian government forces from Eritrea in early 1991.

In 1992, the provisional government of Eritrea announced a referendum over the future status of the area. With 99.8% support registered in favor of independence at a UN supervised referendum in April 1993, the EPLF made arrangements to move to full nationhood, which was declared the following month.