ERITREA
, republic, NE Africa, opposite Yemen. It is bordered on the E by the Red Sea, on the SE by Djibouti, on the S by Ethiopia, and on the W and N by Sudan. Eritrea is located mostly in a semiarid plateau region and covers about 93,680 sq km (about 36,170 sq mi), including the Dahlak Archipelago.Formerly part of Ethiopia, Eritrea became independent in 1993.Population. Eritrea had an estimated population in 1993 of 3,670,000. The overall population density averaged about 39 per sq km sq mi). The population is ethnically varied. Tigrinya is the dominant language; Arabic is spoken along the coast and near the Sudan border. Muslims and Coptic Christians are about equal in number.
Asmara, with a population (1989 est.) of 342,700, is the capital and largest city; Massawa (19,400) is the principal Red Sea port. Economy. Agriculture dominates the economy, but rainfall is scarce, and drought is a constant threat. Many people live as pastoral nomads, although irrigated farming has increased in recent years.
Asmara has some light industry. Eritrea currency is Nakfa. Eritrea's government was in transition in the early 1990s. At independence, the dominant political group was the Eritrean People's Liberation Front; in 1994 it became the People's Front for Democracy and Justice. Legislative power is vested in the unicameral National Assembly, which elects the president.
History
. In the 4th century AD the region was part of the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum (or Axum). It flourished as a semi-independent state under nominal Ethiopian sovereignty until annexed in the 16th century by the Ottoman Empire. Italy occupied (1885) some coastal regions andestablished (1890) a colony here named Eritrea, from the Roman name for the Red Sea, Mare Erythraeum. From 1936 to 1941 this colony was joined with Italian-occupied Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland to form Italian East Africa.
During World War II, British forces captured (1941) Eritrea and controlled it (as a UN trusteeship after 1949) until the UN returned the region to Ethiopian sovereignty in 1952 as a federated autonomous unit. In 1962 Eritrea was annexed as a province of Ethiopia. Eritrean secessionists then waged a protracted guerrilla war. The ouster of Ethiopia's Marxist regime in 1991 led to the estab-lishment in Eritrea of a provisional autonomous government led by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and its secretary-general Issaias Afewerki (1945- ).
On May 24, 1993, Eritrea formally declared its independence. Ethiopia, the U.S., and several other countries immediately granted the new nation diplomatic recognition, and the UN admitted Eritrea to full membership. The new National Assembly elected Afewerki president and began work on a new constitution.
Eritrea's flag.
