Hello! I’m an Albanian girl and I want to introduce my country to you. Its name in Albanian is “Shqipëria” and it means “The eagle’s land”.
Albania is a Mediterranean country in South Eastern Europe.
It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west, and on the Ionian Sea to the south-west.
Our neighbours are Montenegro to the north, Macedonia to the east, Serbia to the north-east and Greece to the south-east.
It’s a little country.
My city, Tirana, is the capital city of Albania. It is a half-sized and colourful city.
Now, Albania’s population is 3.639.459 habitants. The average density is of 133 persons per km2.
The Lek is the official currency. The equivalence is 1 Euro=123.11 Lek.
My country speaks a lot of languages. The official one is Albanian but there are other ones like Greek, Vlach, Romani and Slavic dialects.
The government is a parliamentary republic. The president is Bamir Topi, since 2007. The Prime Minister is Sali Berisha.
Albania has belonged to the international organization NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) since 2 April 2009. Albania is an official candidate to enter the EU (European Union) but it isn’t a member yet. It is also in the UNO organization, in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in the Council of Europe, in the World Trade Organization, in the Organization of the Islamic Conference and in one of the founding members of the Union for the Mediterranean.
The demographic growth rate in 2009 with 2008 is 0.546%.
Albania’s immigration is very low, it has only a percentage of 2,317%.
Albanian people have to emigrate to other countries (Italy and Greece)because of the Communist Rule befora and because of poverty nowadays.
The life expectancy of men is 75.28 years and of women, 80.89 years. It is a very high number.
Albania is considered one of the poorest countries in Europe.
In 1992 we had the first non-communist government .
In 2000 there was a process of modernization in health and Albania got rid of diseases like malaria.
The education was very, very bad but today the literacy rate is 99%. We have developed very much in our quality of life.
The unemployment official rate is 12.5%, but maybe it’s about 30% because of the preponderance of the farming subsistence.
(PIB) Our GDP Gross Domestic Product is about $21.82 billion. But Albania's black economy maybe is the 50% of official GDP.
(IDH) Albania’s HDI Human Development Index is 0.818 (the number 70 of 177 countries in the ONU).
The pollution is a problem for Albania. Now it’s better than some years ago, in 2004 there were very dirty and contaminating dumps. Tirana threw its rotting food, plastics, batteries… in an enormous field. The waste was burned, forming noxious and bad smoke.
Now Albania’s government is reforming it because if we want to enter the EU, we have to take more care of the environment. They’re doing it also for health, obviously.
To finish with I have to mention our conflict albano-kosovar, but I hope we will solve it soon.
