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People
Population
Today, Eritrea has an estimated population of over five million. An estimated 80 percent of Eritrea's population lives in rural areas, subsisting through agriculture and livestock husbandry. The major cities of Eritrea include the capital and largest city Asmara, the seaports Massawa and Aseb, Keren, Nak'fa, Ak'ordat and Teseney.
Religion
The population is a mixture of Christians and Muslims. In general, most of the Christians live in the highlands, while Muslims and adherents of traditional beliefs live in the lowland regions.
Ethnicity and Language
Eritrea's population comprises nine ethnic groups, most of which speak Semitic or Cushitic languages. The main linguistic groupings include the Afar, Arabic, Bedawi, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, Saho, Tigre and Tigrinya. English is the official language and Italian -- a testament to Eritrea's past -- is also spoken. The Tigrinya and Tigre make up 90 percent of the population and speak different, but related and somewhat mutually understandable, Semitic languages. Tigrinya and Arabic are the most frequently used languages for commercial and official transactions, but English is widely spoken and is the language used for secondary and university education.
Health and Welfare
In terms of quality of life, the life expectancy rate in Eritrea is 62.52 years of age (60.4 years for males and 64.69 years for females) for the total population. The infant mortality rate, according to recent estimates, is 41.33 deaths per 1,000 live births. The rate of infectious diseases is rated to be high. Food or waterborne diseases prevalent in the area include bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever; vectorborne diseases include malaria. About seven percent of GDP in this country is spent on health expenditures.
It is estimated that 58.6 percent of the overall population is literate, according to recent statistics. This number obfuscates gender variance since 69.9 percent of males are literate and 47.6 percent of females are literate. About two percent of GDP in this country is spent on educational expenditures.
Effects of War
The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia from 1998-2000 significantly undermined the already poor living conditions. As a result of the war, GDP growth in 1999 fell to less than one percent, and GDP decreased by 8.2 percent in 2000. The whole of the population suffered from the re-concentration of resources on the war effort rather than famine relief and industrial expansion. An estimated 1.5 million farmers in the border regions were displaced and refugees mounted throughout the war.
The most significantly impacted sub-population was the women of the Badame region. Subjected to torture and rape as a means of warfare, Ethiopian and Eritrean women alike paid dearly for remaining on their farms. As Ethiopian policy was to drive Eritrean farmers away by planting land mines, many Eritrean women were the first to learn of the strategy as they entered their fields for the planting seasons.
Yet despite the great poverty and human tragedies of the past several years, the people of Eritrea are closer to the mountain of development than many of their sub-Saharan African neighbors. The government is relatively stable, benefiting from strong, established institutions, and the economy is well balanced between agriculture, industry, trade and emergent economic activities. Personal betterment for Eritreans may well be grounded in the ability of the leadership to keep the country out of wars.
Human Development
A notable measure of human development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which is formulated by the United Nations Development Program. The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main areas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a recent ranking of 177 countries, the HDI placed Eritrea in the low human development category, at 157th place. In the most recent HDI update by the United Nations, Eritrea was omitted.
Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief, www.countrywatch.com; see Bibliograpy for list of research sources.
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