Distillers Country guides / Eritrea
Eritrea
A one-page guide to Eritrea for the spirits trade: the country, its people, its economy and how it drinks.
At a glance
- Capital
- Asmara
- Official languages
- No official language; Tigrinya, Arabic and English are working languages
- Currency
- Nakfa (ERN)
- Time zone
- UTC+3
- Area
- 121,630 km²
People
- Population
- 3.6 million (2025)
- Population growth
- 2.0% a year
- Living in towns and cities
- 34.5%
- Aged under 15
- 37.6%
- Aged 65 and over
- 4.3%
- Life expectancy
- 68.9 years
Economy
- GDP
- US$2.1 billion (2011)
- GDP per person
- US$689 (2011)
- Economic growth
- 8.68% (2011)
Climate
Highlands (up to 3,000 m) are temperate, up to about 30 C in May and as low as about 10 C on December-February nights. Lowlands and coast are very hot (up to about 40 C June-September).
Alcohol
- Alcohol is
- Legal
- Legal drinking age
- 18
- Alcohol per adult a year
- 1.07 litres of pure alcohol (2020)
Sources: World Bank (population, economy and demographics), WHO Global Health Observatory (alcohol per adult and drinking mix); Wikipedia: Eritrea; World Bank Open Data API (population, area, GDP, growth, inflation); Our World in Data / WHO GHO alcohol per capita; Wikipedia: Legal drinking age. Figures are the latest each source publishes; the year is shown beside each one.