Eritrea

Eritrea is a country in Africa.

It is next to the Red Sea. High mountains run down the middle. The capital city is Asmara.

Eritrea is in the Horn of Africa, the part of eastern Africa shaped like a horn. Its coast runs for about 1,000 kilometers along the Red Sea, and its name comes from Mare Erythraeum, the old Latin name for the Red Sea.

A strip of highlands about 2,000 meters high runs down the middle of the country. Asmara, the capital and largest city, is up there. Eritrea became an independent country in 1993. The World Bank estimated about 3.6 million people lived there in 2025.

Eritrea lies in the Horn of Africa on the Red Sea, with a coastline of roughly 1,000 km from Cape Kasar in the north to the Strait of Mandeb, which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden. Its name is an Italianized form of Mare Erythraeum, Latin for Red Sea; Britannica notes that the Red Sea brought Christianity and Islam to the area and made its ports prizes for Turkey, Egypt and Italy.

The country became sovereign in 1993. Asmara, the capital and largest city, stands on the central highlands. The World Bank's model estimate for 2025 is 3,607,003 people. About two-fifths of the population is under 15, and by the early 21st century about two-fifths was urban.

Asmara is the capital city.

It sits high up in the mountains. It has many unusual old buildings. Massawa is a hot port town by the sea.

Asmara stands more than 2,000 meters above sea level. Italy ruled Eritrea from 1890, and in the 1930s builders filled Asmara with bold, modern buildings: offices, homes, shops, cinemas and places of worship. Today the city is a World Heritage Site, listed in 2017 as a modernist African city.

Massawa is an old port on the Red Sea with long links to Arabia. High on the Qohaito plateau, at about 2,600 meters, are the ruins of an ancient town that traded through the old port of Adulis about 1,300 to 1,900 years ago.

UNESCO inscribed Asmara: A Modernist African City in 2017. Developed as an Italian military outpost from the 1890s, it was planned in phases between 1893 and 1941; after 1935 a large building program applied the Italian rationalist style to government buildings, homes, shops, cinemas, churches, mosques and synagogues. UNESCO calls it an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism in Africa and notes that the planning also followed principles of racial segregation.

Massawa, an old cosmopolitan port with strong links to Arabia, was greatly expanded under Italy, and Asseb was developed as a new port. Eritrea's tentative World Heritage list includes Qohaito, a 32 km² plateau at 2,600–2,700 m whose town prospered before and during the Aksumite period (about 100–700 CE), astride routes from the ancient Red Sea port of Adulis, and was abandoned around 900 CE.

The mountains in Eritrea are cool.

The coast by the sea is very hot. In one dry place, the land is lower than the sea! Little coral islands sit in the Red Sea.

In the middle of Eritrea, the highlands rise about 2,000 meters, cut by deep gorges into flat-topped hills called ambas. To the east, the land drops steeply to a hot coastal plain. In the south is the Danakil Plain, where part of the ground is more than 90 meters below sea level and it almost never rains.

Massawa, on the coast, averages about 30 °C, while Asmara, only 65 kilometers away but about 2,300 meters higher, averages about 17 °C. Off the coast lie the Dahlak islands, more than 100 small coral islands.

The central highlands, a narrow north–south strip at about 2,000 m, are the northern end of the Ethiopian Plateau: crystalline basement rock overlain by limestone and sandstone and capped by basalt, dissected into steep-sided, flat-topped ambas. Mount Soira, about 3,013 m by Britannica's figure, is the highest point. Eastward the plateau drops abruptly to a coastal plain 15–80 km wide north of the Gulf of Zula; to the south the Danakil Plain, part of the East African Rift System, includes the northern end of the Kobar Sink, more than 90 m below sea level. The western plain averages 460 m, with savanna. The Gash (Mereb upstream) and Tekezē flow west toward the Atbara and the Nile; the Baraka and Anseba flow north into Sudan.

Elevation drives the climate: Massawa averages about 30 °C, among the highest averages in the world, while Asmara, 65 km away and roughly 2,300 m higher, averages about 17 °C. The plateau gets about 400–500 mm of rain, mainly in summer; the eastern edges and coast get some winter and spring rain, and the interior of the Danakil is practically rainless.

Gentle dugongs graze on sea grass in the Red Sea.

Sea turtles swim over the coral. On land live rare wild donkeys, called wild asses, and leopards.

Eritrea's seas are full of life. About 500 kinds of fish live off its coast, along with five kinds of sea turtles, dolphins and whales, and the dugong, a gentle sea mammal that eats sea grass. There are coral reefs, sea grass beds and mangroves.

On land, scientists have counted 126 kinds of mammals and 557 kinds of birds. Some large animals, such as the African wild ass, the elephant and the greater kudu, have become rare after many years of drought and damage to the land. A report to the Convention on Biological Diversity says that areas closed to woodcutting and grazing have helped some of them, and the leopard, increase in number.

The Convention on Biological Diversity's country profile (a draft prepared by its secretariat) records 126 mammal species, including 9 marine mammals, 557 birds, 90 reptiles and 19 amphibians. The marine and coastal zone in the southern Red Sea holds about 500 fish species, 5 marine turtle species, 8 or more cetaceans and the dugong, with coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves; Eritrea is also a center of origin and diversity for sorghum, wheat and barley.

The profile describes severe land degradation after 30 years of armed struggle, drought and neglect, and lists the elephant, wild ass, greater kudu and civet as in danger of national extinction. Eritrea had no formally protected areas, but by 1999 about 192,734 ha had been closed to wood cutting and grazing, and the profile reports rising numbers of African wild ass, African elephant, greater kudu, leopard, sea turtles, dugongs and sharks. Threats at sea include coastal development and destructive trawling.

About 3.6 million people live in Eritrea.

Many people speak Tigrinya or Tigré. Many families farm and keep sheep, goats and camels.

About half the people are Tigrinya, who live mostly in the highlands, and nearly a third are Tigre, in the north and the lowlands. Their two languages are written in the same script, but speakers of one cannot understand the other. The Afar, Saho, Beja, Bilin, Kunama, Nara and Rashaida are other peoples of Eritrea. Arabic and English are widely understood.

About four out of five people make a living from farming or herding. Farmers grow sorghum, millet and a local grain called teff, and herders keep sheep, cattle, goats and camels.

The Tigray (often called Tigrinya in Eritrea) make up about half the population and live mainly on the plateau; the Tigre, nearly one-third, live in the north and the lowlands. Tigrinya and Tigré share a script and descend from ancient Ge'ez but are mutually unintelligible. Other groups include the Bilin, whose language is Cushitic, the Afar, Saho and Beja, the Arabic-speaking Rashaida (the only truly nomadic group), and the Nilotic-speaking Kunama and Nara. Arabic and English are widely understood. About half the population is Christian and about half Muslim.

The plateau, a quarter of the land, holds about half the people, mostly settled farmers; the lowlands support mainly pastoralists, who also grow crops when rain allows. Agriculture supports about four-fifths of people; staples are sorghum, millet and teff, with sheep, cattle, goats and camels. Salt is mined in the Kobar Sink, the Bisha gold mine opened in 2011, and Red Sea fish are a significant export.