DJIBOUTI is a hot, dry, desert enclave located at the southeastern entrance to the Red Sea between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Djibouti City, the nation's capital, is the main shipping center for the entire Horn of Africa region. About two-thirds of the approximately 622,000 people live in the capital city. Considered to be the hottest country in the world, Djibouti was France's last colony in Africa and still relies heavily on foreign aid from France and the United States. At the time of it's independance in 1977, Djibouti had very few college graduates and little skilled labor. About 95 percent of the people are loyal Muslims with strong ties to Saudi Arabia. Tension between the largest people groups -- the Afar and the Issa Somali -- has caused ongoing political instability. The country has been involved in ethnic conflict since 1991. There is a small but struggling church composed primarily of ethnic Somalis.	ERITREA, which borders Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia, stretches for about 500 miles along the southwestern shore of the Red Sea. The economy is based primarily on livestock, hearding and subsistance agriculture, with fish being the major source of food. The overall agricultural output is poor. A land of diverse languages and religions, Eritrea became part of Ethiopia in 1962. After 31 years of fierce fighting, Eritrea declared it's independance in 1993. Crop failure resulted in severe food shortages in 1994. Eritreans are proud, independant people with a strong commitment to working together for the good of the country. The cooperation between the diverse ethnic peoples that add to a total of about 3,800,000 is unusual.
ETHIOPIA, which lies at the heart of the Horn of Africa, is a fertile mountain plateau surrounded by the blazing coastal and inland deserts of Somalia, Kenya and Sudan. Ethiopia has a rich Christian heritage; it was one of the first Christian nations and is mentioned in the Bible more than 60 times. The rise of Islam in the 7th century led to conflict with the previously well established Coptic Church, now called the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In 1974 Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown, and a Marxist regime ruled the nation until 1991. During the Marxist years Christians were severely persecuted. A series of droughts in the 1970s and 1980s killed tens of thousands of people, leaving vast stretches of the Ethiopian countryside barren, and the people impoverished. Ethiopia, with it's 58,733,000 people, is still in a state of shock from death, famine, and war. It seems the nation has lost it's sense of identity and purpose, leaving it divided on regional and ethnic lines. Through all these difficulties, the church has continued to grow and flourish.
SOMALIA, which forms the very tip of the Horn of Africa, is an arid coastal plain along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean with about 6,870,000 people. Subsistance postoral economy dominates Somalia, and the people are primarily nomadic or semi-nomadic herders. In 1969 Ge. Mohammed Siad Barre siezed power and imposed a one-man rule. In 1974 he evicted missionary organizations from the country. He was run out of Somalia in 1991, leaving the nation in desparate poverty. Subsequent clan warefare caused appalling famine and destruction. The Somalis believe their first ancestor was a member of the Qaraysh (Koreish) tribe, to which the prophet Mohammed belonged. Today Somalia is an almost totally Muslim country. Its strongly oral culture places high value on poetry, proverbs and traditional stories. There was no written language until 1971. Somalis are remarkably homogeneous in their language, culture and identity. There is no viable indigenous church at present.	SUDAN, Africa's largest country, stretches more than 1,200 miles from Egypt in the north to Kenya, Uganda and Congo in the south in which approximately 32,570,000 people live. Chaos and ware, largely among ethnic and religious lines, have characterized Sudan since it's independance in 1956 from Egypt and Britain. A military coup in 1989 led to the establishment of a hard-line Islamic government. Sudan is home to more than 140 ethnic groups, and there is a sharp social, religious and economic division between the militantly Muslim north and the agrarian south, which is predominantly Christian or animistic. The governmet has done everything in its power to eliminate Christianity through the implementation of Islamic law and violent persecution. More than one million people have died due to starvation, martyrdom and the fighting. However, the church has continued to grow despite such repression.

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