In the last decades, the Horn of Africa has been stigmatized as one of the most unstable regions in the world with no place for peace-building, institution building, or democratic processes.This volume deals with Eritrea in the context of recent political developments in the Horn of Africa and neighboring countries. The author analyzes the emergence of nationalism and the political struggle in Eritrea while trying to identify the main dynamics of state formation and the role of colonialism according to different scholarly perspectives. Twenty years later, Eritrea has received a great deal of attention and an international debate is still ongoing. This gives a new contribution to the dynamics of sub-Saharan Africa.