Qualla: Southern Red Sea region

Southern Red Sea region: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. If you measured a place by how hostile its land is to human life, the Southern Red Sea region of Eritrea would rank near the top. The population is 83,500 across 27,600 square kilometers - about three people per square kilometer. The dominant geography is the Danakil Desert, a salt-crusted volcanic plain that ranks among the hottest places on earth. Rainfall averages 200 millimeters per year. The soil is too salty for agriculture. And yet the region stretches 500 kilometers along the Red Sea, bounded by Mount Ramlu at 2,248 meters, containing the coastal city of Assab and a handful of small towns whose names - Beilul, Rahaita, T'i'o - appear on maps rarely and in guidebooks less often.

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Southern Red Sea region: The Danakil

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Southern Red Sea region forms the major part of the Danakil Desert, the geological depression where the African, Arabian, and Somali tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart. In other places, this kind of geology produces volcanoes and ocean floors. Here it has produced a lan...

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Southern Red Sea region: The Port of Assab

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Assab is the largest town in the region and the country's principal southern port. Newly unified Italy bought Assab from a local sultan in 1869, the same year the Suez Canal opened, and the acquisition eventually became the foundation of the colony of Eritrea in 1890. The port ha...

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Southern Red Sea region: The Wildlife That Remains

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Despite the harshness, the region supports a surprising range of animals - hamadryas baboons, Soemmerring's gazelle, dorcas gazelle, warthog, black-backed jackal, Ruppell's fox, dikdik, African golden wolf, striped hyena, Abyssinian hare, African wild ass, and ostriches. The Afri...

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Southern Red Sea region: The Afar People

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Most of the region's residents are Afar, an ethnic group whose traditional homeland straddles Eritrea, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. Afar society has traditionally been organized into loose confederations under sultans, with the Sultanate of Aussa historically the most prominent. The A...

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Southern Red Sea region: Demography of a Hard Country

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. As of 2005, the region had 83,500 people, up from 73,700 in 2001 - a net growth rate of 11.74 percent. The total fertility rate was 3.9 children per woman. Infant mortality ran at 122 deaths per 1,000 live births, a figure that reflects both the environmental pressures and the ga...

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Southern Red Sea region: Aerial View

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. From altitude the Southern Red Sea region appears almost like an extraterrestrial landscape - salt flats glittering in the sun, dark volcanic fields, the sinuous coastline with its scatter of small islands, the thin green strips where seasonal wadis have briefly supported vegetat...

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Image: Public domain