Eritrea is located in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea.
Area: Total – 117,600 Km² (45,405 sq mi )
Coastline: 2,234 km
Climate
Hot, dry desert strip along the Red Sea coast; cooler and wetter in the central highlands
(up to 61 cm of rainfall annually); semiarid in western hills and lowlands; rainfall heaviest during June-September except in coastal desert.
Terrain
Dominated by extension of Ethiopian north-south trending highlands, descending on the east to a coastal desert plain, on the northwest to hilly terrain and on the southwest to flat-to-rolling plains
Population
According to July 2005 estimate it has a population of 4,401,009 people
Languages
Many languages are spoken in Eritrea. The country has two official languages, Tigrinya and Arabic, Italian and English are also widely understood Most of the languages spoken in Eritrea stem from the Semitic and Cushitic branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
Ethnic Groups
Eritrean society is ethnically heterogeneous but the Tigrinya people and the Tigre people add up to 80% of the population. These form the bulk of the country’s predominantly Semitic-speaking population. The rest of the population is comprised of other Afro-Asiatic groups such as the Saho, Hedareb, Afar, and Bilen. These Cushitic-speaking peoples are thought to be the oldest inhabitants of the Horn of Africa. There are also a number of Nilotic peoples who are represented in Eritrea by the Kunama and Nara. Each ethnicity speaks a different native tongue but, typically, many of the minorities speak more than one language. There exist minorities of Italian Eritreans and Ethiopian Tigrayans. The most recent addition to the nationalities of Eritrea is the Rashaida.
Natural Hazards: The major natural hazards facing Eritrea are frequent droughts and locust invasions.
Environmental Issues: Deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, overgrazing, loss and destruction of infrastructure from the civil war and the recent conflict with Ethiopia are other environmental issues.