Just 22% of children in Eritrea have access to safe water (of the 5,365 known boreholes about 3,374 offer unprotected water and a further 1,233 are known to be contaminated leading to a prevalence of waterborne diseases including bacterial diarrhoea, Hepatitis A and typhoid fever), whilst a mere 13% have access to sanitation facilities leading to regular epidemics of diarrhoea, malaria, and respiratory infections. In fact, as of 2020, 80.7% of Eritreans lack basic water services. 10,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS, with over three thousand infected themselves, although by African standards these rates are fairly low with only 0.8% of the overall population infected.

Child enrolment in elementary school is just 39% (which falls to 21% for secondary school) and the average child who does attend has six years worth of schooling with each day just four hours long due to a lack of teachers. Around 84% of the population are literate, however this figure is lower for girls as it is across much of Africa. Each child in Eritrea, as they become an adult, is required to undertake national service for a minimum of twelve months however often the period of enlistment is much longer than that (often indefinite), with one in every fifteen Eritrean citizens in the armed forces such is the country's distrust of neighbour Ethiopia. Life for children in Eritrea has been described "no educational and career prospects, and the only thing they can look forward to is a lifetime of quiet servitude." You can help when you sponsor a child in Eritrea.