A Red Sea name hides a one-party state without elections
Eritrea on the Horn borders Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti with a long Red Sea shore and capital Asmara. Hominid fossils a million years old and Aksum’s first-millennium realm root deep time; Italian colonists formalized the Greek Erythraean—“Red”—Sea name in 1890.
The territory covers about 117,600 square kilometres, including the Dahlak Archipelago and some of the Hanish Islands. The Kingdom of Aksum, based in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, arose in the first or second century AD; Mani, founder of Manichaeism, ranked it among the world's four great powers, and it turned Christian around the mid-fourth century. From the twelfth century the Zagwe and Solomonic dynasties held shifting sway over the plateau and coast. The central highlands, called Mereb Melash, beyond the Mereb, were the northern frontier of Ethiopian kingdoms under a governor styled Bahr Negus, king of the sea.
Ottoman efforts over decades in the sixteenth century failed to take the highlands, and a treaty confined them to the coast. Egypt's Khedivate took much of the coastal lowland in May 1865 and passed it to Italy in February 1885. Italian troops pushed inland from Massawa, and the colony formed in 1889 fixed today's borders. Britain took over administration in 1942, and a 1952 UN decision gave Eritrea its own parliament while federating it with Ethiopia for defence and foreign affairs. Formal independence came in 1993.
Nine ethnic groups are recognised, each with its own language. Tigrinya speakers make up about half the population and Tigre about 30 percent; Saho, Kunama, Nara, Afar, Beja, Bilen and Arabic speakers make up the rest, alongside Nilotic groups. Tigrinya, Arabic and English are the working languages, and most people are Christian or Muslim.
Isaias Afwerki has been president since independence, and no national legislative or presidential election has ever taken place. Observers rank its human rights record among the world's worst, a charge the government calls politically driven. Eritrea is an Arab League observer and left the regional bloc IGAD in December 2025, saying it had become a tool against states like itself.
Source: Eritrea
