The study of the fertility transition in Eritrea provides an opportunity to question the availability and quality of sources useful for the study of population in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also it opens the discussion on the usefulness and difficulty of conducting fieldwork in order to fill knowledge gaps and collect original data otherwise unavailable on sensitive issues in peculiar geographical and political environments.

The paper focuses on the analysis of the fertility trend in post-independent Eritrea (1991-2015), thanks to available data: mainly the Demographic and Health Surveys (1995, 2002, 2010) and the Ministry of Health reports, together with a critical glimpse on the United Nations Population Revision 2015 and the Millennium Development Goals country reports. Moreover, in the last twentyfive years different factors have influenced the direct and indirect determinants of fertility, so the contextualization is important to avoid simplifications and misinterpretations. In detail, the focus will be on the limits of sources and methods in the Eritrean case study, on traditional practices (such as gender roles, female genital mutilations, and concubinage), on the influence of biopolitics promoted by the ruling party (PFDJ), and on how the migratory culture that characterizes Eritrea is affecting both population structure and dynamics.