Afabet steadily growing to an urban center

Afabet is a small but steadily growing town in the Northern Red Sea region. It is also the capital city of Afabet sub-zone. Afabet sub-zone comprises 14 administrative areas with more than 85 thousand population.

The area as remote as it had been before independence, it was deprived from all social services. I had almost no schools, no health services and with short of water and energy supply. Practically, the people in that sub-zone had never got the chance of having any thing good for living from the Ethiopian colonizers except torture, killing and displacement from their lands. Afabet proper by itself was a village only the hub of the colonizing troops amassed there in preparation to wipe out the Eritrean liberation fighters whose stronghold was in Nakfa and its surrounding. Hence the inhabitants of Afabet town were under besiege and constantly in fear and harassment. The inhabitants never want to remember the ten years they spend under the brutal army which was only there seeking the land and not the people. Above all every one inhabitant was suspected as collaborator to the liberation fighters and not immune from imprisonment and killing, be it a kid, a woman or an elderly.

Afabet celebrated the 25 years of its freedom from 15 to 17 March, 2013. On the 17 of March the Eritrean People’s Liberation Army stormed the heavy fortified enemy trenches and crashed the twenty thousand strong enemy army with its supporting mechanized brigades and its Soviet advisors. Several small and heavy artilleries fall in the hands of the liberation fighters. Since then Afabet was free for once and for all and never to see subjugation, torture and killing. It ever since became the dear land of its inhabitants.

To day Afabet is growing into a modern town. The sub-zone of Afabet enjoys modern social services. There are nine elementary schools, seven junior high-schools and two high-schools. There are also two clinics, one health center and 1 hospital. Comparing to 85 thousand inhabitants and with the span of time after independence it is a huge progress in terms of what Afabet used to be under the yoke of colonialism.

Every one visiting Afabet from the early days of independence would observe how much change Afabet has registered. It has 24 hours electricity supply, beautiful building of Commercial Bank, street lights, a small but a beautiful stage in which they could stage different events and other infrastructural facilities.

The livelihood of the inhabitants of Afabet sub-zone depends on farming, herding and trade. The majority of the people depend from farming for their livelihood while some from herding and few from trade. With speed of the progress Afabet is registering it is every ones guess that in the near future Afabet would be one of the beautiful towns in the Northern Red Sea region.