Italian Eritreans
The city has a significant population of Italian Eritreans. These are Eritrean-born descendants of Italian settlers as well as Italian long-term residents in Eritrea. Those born of mixed race unions are called 'hanfets'. Their ancestry dates back from the beginning of the Italian colonization of Eritrea at the end of the 19th century, but only after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War of 1935 they settled in large numbers. In the 1939 census of Eritrea there were more than 75,000 Eritrean Italians (over 10% of the Eritrean population then), most of them (53,000) living in Asmara. Many Italian settlers got out of their colony after its conquest by the Allies in November 1941 and they were reduced to only 38,000 by 1946. Although many of the remaining Italians stayed during the decolonization process after World War II and are actually assimilated to the Eritrean society, a few are stateless today, as none of them were given citizenship unless through marriage or, more rarely, by having it conferred upon them by the State.
| year | Italian Eritreans | Eritrea population | Asmara population | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1910 | 1,000 | 390,000 | 24,000 | |||
| 1935 | 3,100 | 610,000 | 47,000 | |||
| 1939 | 76,000 | 740,000 | 103,000 | |||
| 1946 | 38,000 | 870,000 | 88,000 | |||
| 2008 | 900 | 4,500,000 | 610,000 | |||
Today there are approximately 900 Italian Eritreans remaining in the Asmara region. However, there an estimated 100,000 descendants of Italian Eritreans out of the 600,000 population of the city of Asmara.
Read more about this topic: Asmara, Demographics
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