Is Asmara now smaller than Arba Minch or Jijiga, as Abiy Ahmed said?

What was claimed

In a Tigrinya-language interview published by Ethiopian state broadcaster EBC on 19 October 2026, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said: “Today, if you take Asmara, it has become a city smaller than Arba Minch or Jijiga” A. He spoke in Tigrinya; the words are EBC’s Amharic subtitles, in our translation. The Amharic word in the subtitle means “smaller” or “lesser” in general. The next sentences, “Massawa has been left empty; Assab too has become a city without people”, suggest he meant population, and that is how we test it.

Arba Minch is a town in southern Ethiopia and Jijiga the capital of the Somali region. Asmara is Eritrea’s capital.

The problem with counting Asmara

Eritrea has not held a census since independence. Every figure for Asmara today is an estimate, and they differ widely.

Arba Minch

On every source we found, Asmara is larger than Arba Minch.

• The UN’s 2025 estimates, the lowest for Asmara, give Asmara 228,270 and Arba Minch 168,228 B.
• Africapolis, a project of the OECD’s Sahel and West Africa Club that maps cities from satellite imagery, gives Asmara 482,160 and Arba Minch 194,750 for 2020 E.
• Ethiopia’s own 1984 census counted Asmara at 281,110 and Arba Minch at 20,280 G.

Jijiga

One dataset supports this half of the claim. The UN’s 2025 World Urbanization Prospects estimates Jijiga at 422,225 and Asmara at 228,270 for mid-2025 B.

But the UN marks its own figure for Asmara as of “Low” plausibility for 2025, as it does for Massawa and Keren; it rates Jijiga and Arba Minch “High” B. The UN built its Eritrean figures from 2012 health ministry estimates for six regions, and Ethiopia’s from the 2007 census at 734 districts C. The same dataset puts Massawa, at 354,657, above Asmara, and has Asmara falling from 337,857 in 2015 to 214,404 in 2020. Africapolis puts Massawa at 33,840.

Other sources put Asmara well above Jijiga:

• the UN’s previous edition, from 2018, put Asmara at 962,985 in 2020, and listed neither Jijiga nor Arba Minch among cities of 300,000 or more D;
• Africapolis gives Asmara 482,160 and Jijiga 148,784 for 2020 E.

Eritrea’s own figures are old and rounded: its Ministry of Information put Asmara’s population at 450,000 in 2009 and about 400,000 in 2014 H.

Jijiga’s size is uncertain too. Ethiopia’s statistics office projects it at 210,128 for July 2024, using a different method from the UN F, and in 2019 Ethiopian Business Review reported the city administration as saying more than 300,000 people live there.

Our verdict

Misleading. On every dataset we found, Asmara is larger than Arba Minch. Only the UN’s 2025 estimates put Asmara below Jijiga, and the UN rates its own 2025 Asmara figure as of “Low” plausibility; the UN’s previous edition and Africapolis put Asmara well above Jijiga. Eritrea has held no census since independence, so Asmara’s exact size is not known.

Sources

• EBC, interview with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, 19 October 2026: YouTube (20:37-20:45).
• UN DESA Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2025: downloads (cities files F21 and the city database with plausibility ratings; input metadata).
• UN DESA Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2018: files.
• Africapolis (OECD/SWAC): data.
• Ethiopian Statistics Service, population projections 2024: archive.
• Office of the Population and Housing Census Commission (Transitional Government of Ethiopia), 1984 census national analytical report, 1991: archive.
• Eritrea Ministry of Information, shabait.com: 2009, 2014.
• UN Statistics Division, census programme register (no Eritrean census in the 2000, 2010 and 2020 rounds).