Talk:Demographics of Eritrea/Archive 1

Jebertis
Jebertis aren't an ethnic group, but simply muslim Tigrés or Tigrawot (who speak Tigrigna, not the ethnic group Tigre). For instance, there are muslim Tigrés in Ethiopia (though few in number), but they are still Tigrés. I'm reverting the Demographics of Eritrea back to the previous version. Yom

Also, the ethnic groups should probably separated. Tigrés/Tigrinyas and Tigres make up 80%+ of the population, but Kunamas are included with the Tigre group, while the Kunamas are only 100,000 strong, or about 2-3% of the population. Yom

yom if jeberti are part of tigrigna ethnic group because of the so called "biher" policy in eritrea which is based upon language spoken in eritrea then why the links states that all tigrigna speakers are christians???either you add that a % of the tigrigna ethnic group are muslims or you can create another article as how tigray from ethiopia and tigrigna in eritrea are the same ethnic group and SHOULD NOT BE SEPERATED. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yaya7 (talk • contribs) 04:29, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ethnic groups, by definition share a common history. Ethnicity is not equal to nationality. Jeberti are Muslim Tigrinya. They are not a separate ethnicity, they simple follow another religion. --Merhawie (talk) 19:01, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

if that's so then why is the official eritrean data shows that all tegrenya ethnic people are christians?make up your minds either include that 25% of eritrean tigrinya are muslims or you can claim that all tigrenya are christians by seperating the jebertis.

Censuses
What is curious about Eritrea's census position is that while an Itlaian colony, several censuses were carried out, & provide more accurate demographic information for that period than was available in Ethiopia; however, now the situation is reversed. (I don't know if this earlier material could be incorporated into Wikipedia -- or if it is easily accessible in the US.) -- llywrch 18:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Should I break up "Tigre & Kunama" using the approximation of ~100-120k for the Kunama, or do you think that would be Original research? &mdash; Yom 19:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * When it comes to census data, unless you have a verifiable source, dont put it in.Merhawie 03:04, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * What I'm saying is that I have a verifiable source that the censuses took place; both Trimingham & Ullendorff alude to them. However, beyond some summary statements by both of these authors, I have no idea what those censuses contain. I simply mention their existence in hope that someone with access to the proper resources now knows that they exist, will find them & make proper use of them. -- llywrch 05:02, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Need to separate out cushitic and semitic speakers
Need to separate them out in the tree since 1) semitic speakers make up the vast majority (over 90 percent) of eritrea's population so it is necessary to make that clear with the tree (2) semitic and cushitic speakers are culturally, linguistically, phenotypically, biologically, and most importantly politically distinct, so it is necessary to demonstrate that they do not make up one community--there is clearly the semitic community tigre-tigrinya and small politically influential rashaida speakers and a cushitic community, saho, bilen, afar that are sometimes at odds.

Please discuss here any attempt to change the tree, thanks :) Eritreanlove99 (talk) 00:30, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I've added some quotes to back up the distinction between cushitic and semitic which is kind of obvious for anyone who knows the huge differences between semitic and cushitic speakers in eritrea and the horn of africa (like the huge differences between oromos and somalis on one hand and amhara, tigray and tigrinya on the other; historically, culturally, phenotypically, biologically, on top of linguistically) as a whole, but I know how people on wikipedia like to argue the obvious :( Eritreanlove99 (talk) 00:59, 11 May 2012 (UTC) here are the sources I put:

1.^ See http://www.chr.up.ac.za/chr_old/indigenous/country_reports/Country_reports_Eritrea.pdf, p. 3, separating the Cushitic and Semitic speakers into separate families and noting they are culturally and socially distinct groupings ("Even if the different communities in Eritrea are socially and culturally distinct..."). See p.4("These groups may be divided into three categories, according to their historical evolution from three ancient races: the Semitic; the Hamitic (Cushitic); and the Nilotic races. The Semitic group forms the majority of the population, and consists of the Tigrinya (48 per cent of the total population) and the Tigre (35 per cent). The Rashaida (1 per cent), a recently-established group of Arab origin, may also be included in the Semitic family. Four ethnic groups comprise the Cushitic category: the Afar (4 per cent of the total population); the Saho (3 per cent); the Bilen (2 per cent); and the Hedareb (2 per cent). The Nilotic groups are the Kunama (with 3 per cent of the total population) and the Nara (2 per cent).") 3.^ http://www.harep.org/ifaapr/298.pdf p. 307 ("Ethiopians are different from Eritreans. Eritreans are mixed between Yemeni,Zagwe, people from the north. The real, original Eritreans are the people around Barentu and then these other people came from the north and from Yemen and mixed with them. Our faces are lighter than the Ethiopians. The Eritreans have smaller bones. The Ethiopians come from the south, they come from Kenya, they're more like Africans. They're bigger and they have darker skin.") 4.^ http://www.harep.org/ifaapr/298.pdf p. 307 ("Ethiopians are different from Eritreans. Eritreans are mixed between Yemeni,Zagwe, people from the north. The real, original Eritreans are the people around Barentu and then these other people came from the north and from Yemen and mixed with them. Our faces are lighter than the Ethiopians. The Eritreans have smaller bones. The Ethiopians come from the south, they come from Kenya, they're more like Africans. They're bigger and they have darker skin.")

Eritreanlove99 (talk) 01:03, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Very strange edits. First, neither Somalis nor Oromos nor Amhara nor Ethiopians in general traditionally inhabit Eritrea, so mentioning them is WP:OFFTOPIC. Second, there are no such races as "Semitic" or "Hamitic" like your quote above alludes to. The first is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family and the second is a former branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (see the Afro-Asiatic languages article). Third, the modern Ethio-Semitic speakers are culturally most closely related with each other, not with the Rashaida (actual Arabs), who live separately and lead very distinct nomadic lives. Fourth, most of the Semitic speakers in Eritrea, as in Ethiopia, are actually of Agaw origin; they just adopted the Semitic languages (c.f. ). That's why genetically they most closely group with other Afro-Asiatic speakers from the Horn and physically resemble them too (see, for example, this genetic study ). That said, I have removed the off-topic and inaccurate racial stuff, and replaced the original research stats with figures from the CIA. Middayexpress (talk) 04:56, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

It is silly to group ethnic groups by deep linguistic phyla such as Afro-Asiatic. Surely, culture and religious adherence is at least as important in ethnic division as a linguistic split some 5,000 years ago. Does a Swedish speaker feel a closer ethnic relation to a Tajik than to a Finn because the former is a "fellow Indo-European"? I thought not. --dab (𒁳) 09:37, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * It is not silly in this instance since, unlike Tajiks and Finns, the Cushitic and Ethiosemitic speakers have inhabited the same territory since time immemorial, share recent ancestry, and most of the Ethiosemitic speakers originally spoke Cushitic languages before adopting Semitic languages. Please see Donald N. Levine's Greater Ethiopia and the Ethiopian language area. Middayexpress (talk) 13:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * It's still pointless. It is pointless to group Italian and English via their "Italic" and "West Germanic" heritage, etc.
 * You also restored the claim that there are "nine official groups". Which are they and how are they "offical"? The constitution doesn't even name national languages, let alone ethnic groups, and the constitution has never come into effect. The country is de facto ruled by thugs, so I doubt there is any sense in which anything can be "official" to begin with.
 * Look, I found a broken article and started improving it. I forgot for a moment these topics are broken because people keep actively breaking them rather than from negligence. I have been playing these games on Wikipedia for ten years, and I have no taste for them now.
 * It is perfectly fair to group the "Ethiosemitic" (or "Habesha") peoples. You did this yourself in your post. So I suggest we can say there is an 80% Ethiosemitic majority, and Cushitic, Arab and Nilotic minorities. --dab (𒁳) 08:04, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand and your good faith efforts are appreciated. Grouping the Ethiosemitic/Habesha populations is not a problem, since they are a unit and also form a numerical majority. However, Habesha are also closely related to the the other major Afro-Asiatic speakers in the country, Cushitic speakers. So it makes sense to group them too, as Minahan does ("The majority of the Eritreans speak Semitic or Cushitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic language group[...] The Kunama, Baria, and other smaller groups in the north and northwest speak Nilotic languages" ). Unlike the Cushitic and Ethiosemitic speaking groups in Eritrea, Italians and Germans a) don't live in the same country nor have they since time immemorial, b) neither of them originally spoke languages from the other subfamily, and c) Italy and Germany are also together not part of any "Greater Germany"/"Greater Italy" or "German language area"/"Italian language area". Habesha also do not constitute a majority of Ethiopia's population, nor are there many of Ethiopia's Ethiosemitic-speaking groups in Eritrea. The 2003 BBC link was about native Eritreans who spoke Amharic, not Amhara people (a distinct population, who in any event aren't one of Eritrea's nine recognized ethnic groups). Additionally, the Jeberti people trace descent separately from the Tigrinya, though they speak the language. That said, the religious dichotomy in Eritrea is mainly between Christian and Muslim adherents. Some authorities estimate it at or near 50%/50%. So it's more neutral to say that "a majority of Eritrea's population adheres to Abrahamic religions" and then give the respective percentages for Christianity and Islam, rather than to describe the division as between Christians and non-Christians. The Muslims don't have any particular religious ties with followers of traditional faiths that would warrant such a grouping, and many of the Ethiosemitic speakers are themselves Muslim. Also, it's the CIA that indicates that Eritrea has nine recognized ethnic groups, including the Rashaida . Middayexpress (talk) 16:18, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Sources and encyclopedicity
In my view, writing "demographics" articles is more than a copy-paste dump from CIA factbook. In developed countries with their own statistics offices, it's a matter of giving a coherent and intelligent summary based on a wealth of data, and secondary sources discussing that data.

In the case of countries that don't have their own statistics, it's an even more difficult task of gathering whatever estimates there are and presenting them together with an intelligent assessment of their origin and reliability. In the case of Eritrea, it is supremely pointless just dumping figures found in an excel sheet hosted at esa.un.org. This data is published with lengthy explanations and caveats. If we're going to produce something encyclopedic from that, there is no way around actually reading the stuff.

Eritrea is found in a very desparate place in the "high fertility" group of this report. They have an estimated population growth of >3% p.a.! This is going to have a radical impact on demographics and society, and it may be partly behind the "worsening conditions" that drives the current emigration wave with lots of people drowning in the Mediterranean. The job of an article such as this would be researching this stuff and presenting it in an easily accessible and well-referenced summary. Instead, this article as I found it seemed to be more preoccupied with ethnic bickering and the definition of Cushitic. This isn't the place. --dab (𒁳) 10:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

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Population update
In relation to the Talk:Eritrea discussion, here, on this page, we have a lot more space for properly NPOVing and sourcing the issue of population. There is no justification to refuse WP:NPOVing the estimates of the total population of Eritrea. Leechjoel9: please remember the discretionary sanctions for Horn of Africa related articles. Scroll to the top of this page, or look through your talk page, if you are unfamiliar with those sanctions.

To minimise the chance of edit battles, I have started by only modifying the section in the body of the article, leaving the lead to be updated later, after edits to the updated section have stabilised.

I have included both the UN DESA full history from 1950, as well as the three high-value estimates, in both the text and the graph. I have attempted to preserve the older material, which claims to be based on UN DESA data, but since there is no archived version of the UN DESA files, it is not possible to verify if the original edits correctly used the outdated UN DESA data. (There might be some Wayback or other archived copies, by I didn't search for them.)

Hypothesis: This is a common sense hypothesis, which is not currently justified for the article, since it is just from me looking at the graph and trying to understand the big question: how is it possible for the population of a country in 2021 to be uncertain by a factor of two? Looking at the graph, the most obvious hypothesis is that people making the high value estimates failed to notice a major stagnation in the population during the first decade of independence - the 1990s. We would need demographers to discuss this if we want to make a comment in the article. But for discussion here, this explanation would at least help us make a reasonable guess as to why the factor of two difference exists in online sources. Boud (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I added a section on the UN DESA Population Division history of immigration into Eritrea and emigration out of Eritrea since 1950 (i.e. since before independence). that includes a graph on the net immigration into Eritrea. By eye, this looks fully consistent with the UN DESA overall population growth graph for Eritrea.

Interpretation (not for the article): It looks like the error made by the CIA and others giving the 6.1 million estimate for 2021 is that they didn't correctly take into account the big exodus, of about 0.450 million, during 1990 to 2000, and the 0.450 million outflow from 2010 to 2020. It also looks like, compared to the difficult-to-check tables in the article claimed to be from un-archived UN DESA data, UN DESA has lowered its general pre-1990 overall population estimates from 3.1 million to 2.2 million. Together these literally explain a 2 million difference; if we take into account the natural population growth (excess births over deaths) from the missing 2 million, then a difference of 2.6 million seems reasonable. So the differences between the estimates would seem to me to be from:
 * 1) the lead-up to 1990 being lower by 1 million when comparing UN DESA 2019 to the un-archived earlier UN DESA estimates;
 * 2) 0.45 million net emigration during 1990-2000; 0.45 million net emigration during 2010-2020; (and 160 million net immigration during 2000-2010);
 * 3) natural growth of the slightly under 2 million difference.

If someone has a source to explain why UN DESA's highly detailed data for Eritrea from 2019 are wrong, or an explanation for why the 2019 UN DESA numbers are right, and preferably from a demographer and/or someone at UN DESA, then please add that. Boud (talk) 23:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

It was reverted, so I'm repeating the link here for convenience for interested editors. See the Population section and then scroll down to the Migration section below. Boud (talk) 23:16, 1 March 2021 (UTC)


 * You are informed about the discretionary sanctions for Horn of Africa related articles, due to all edits and edits conflicts you are engaged in this should be a concern for you. The tagged users haven’t been engaged in the discussion of the population estimates. You are making a lot of assumptions about these sources, they are legitimate so don’t try twist and turn facts. You have also left out the two government sources which indicates that population in 2002 was 3,5M and around six million in 2020. All the other sources CIA, African development bank independently provides three different estimates close or over six million, also consistent with the government sources. The UN source is the only one estimating around 3,5M, therefore it should be the least credible. The main figures in lead and info box in Eritrea article should be those currently in the article, complimented with the mentioned sources and without the UN source in these sections, both here and in the Eritrea article. Leechjoel9 (talk) 00:37, 2 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Leechjoel9: you wrote: . This is called a personal attack, which is not acceptable, because it distracts from editorial discussion.
 * Let us first see if we can finish the discussion for this article, where there is plenty of space to NPOV the article in line with Wikipedia policy.
 * The 2002 Eritrea Ministry of Information estimate of 3.56 million is valid to add to the graph, along with the other data points on the graph; I agree.
 * The 2020 Eritrea Min of Information estimate that you have provided before is a URL that does not provide an estimate, so it cannot be used.
 * You wrote Please read the material and look at the references in the edit that you reverted. We have two low values. We have (1) the 2019 UN DESA estimate of about 3.5 million for 2020; and (2) the Statista estimate of 3.55 million for 2020, and 3.6 million for 2021. See
 * This is not a valid argument: there are two sources giving around 3.5 million; and more importantly, validity of information is not decided by the number of sources alone. The quality of the sources, the detail they provide and their methods and sources, and the diversity of the sources, keeping in mind how they actually get their information, also count.
 * I will try to focus this discussion with a new section. Boud (talk) 17:53, 2 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Regarding "":
 * Dbachmann expressed interest in the demography of Eritrea topic several times, above on this talk page, making quite strong statements: ;.
 * Tobby72 recently made two well-sourced, on-topic edits on the main Eritrea article, which is where the population-of-Eritrea discussion started, and so is likely to be aware of the editorial debate: and.
 * Whether or not Dbachmann and/or Tobby72 wish to participate in this discussion is up to them. Boud (talk) 19:21, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Websites that judge the 2019 UN DESA data to be credible
The following is neither an argument for or against my proposal, since it is equivalent to the list of the 2021 CIA, 2019 COMESA, 2017 ADB and 2016 WHO estimates: those websites all are consistent with the high group of estimates (for a reasonable population growth); the ones below all make statements about sources, all to some degree say that they use UN DESA information.


 * 2021: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/eritrea-population = https://archive.today/46A2Z "The current population of Eritrea is 3,583,617, based on projections of the latest United Nations data. The UN estimates the July 1, 2021 population at 3,601,467."
 * 2020: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/eritrea-demographics = https://archive.today/hVgfF "Population of Eritrea (2020) ... Eritrea Population 3,546,421 "
 * 2021: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ERI/eritrea/population = https://archive.today/UnfRH "The current population of Eritrea in 2021 is 3,601,467, a 1.55% increase from 202"

Boud (talk) 15:15, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

The World Bank provides data only to 2011; the values are consistent with the UN DESA 2019 estimates, so it appears that the WB agrees with UN DESA 2019:
 * 2011: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=ER = https://archive.today/x3zGo "Eritrea 2011 3,213,972" Boud (talk) 16:04, 3 March 2021 (UTC)