Eritrea's Cycling Tradition, a Colonial Import That Became National
The bicycle arrived with Italian colonialism. It stayed, and produced Grand Tour riders.
Country
A Red Sea state that became independent from Ethiopia in 1993 after a thirty-year war. Eritrea holds roughly a thousand kilometres of coastline and the ports of Massawa and Assab, and its capital Asmara is a UNESCO World Heritage site for its modernist architecture.
Regions of Eritrea
The bicycle arrived with Italian colonialism. It stayed, and produced Grand Tour riders.
Carriers rerouting around southern Africa change the economics of every terminal between Massawa and Mogadishu.
Four countries, one strategic waterway, and a hundred and twenty million people who need to reach it.
Six factors explain why states with no obvious connection to the region maintain a presence in it.