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The Albanian language, called shqip or shqipe by Albanians, is of interest to linguists because, as a descendant of the extinct Illyrian tongue, it is the only surviving member of its branch of the Indo-European language family. Influenced by centuries of rule by foreigners, the Albanian vocabulary has adopted many words from the Latin, Greek, Turkish, Italian, and Slavic tongues. There are two principal dialects: Geg, spoken north of the Shkumbin River, and Tosk, spoken in the south. Geg dialects are also spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, and Tosk dialects, though somewhat archaic as a result of centuries of separation from their place of origin in Albania, are prominent in the Albanian communities of Greece and Italy. Although there are variations even within these two dialects, Albanians can understand one another with no difficulty.
Because official business and ecclesiastical functions had long been conducted in Latin or Greek, Albanian did not acquire a definitive orthography until 1908, when a writing system was adopted based on the Roman alphabet. Before this time, publications written in Albania used a mix of different alphabets—namely, Latin, Greek, Turko-Arabic, and Cyrillic. Attempts were then made in following decades to create a unified language based on the Geg dialect of the central Elbasan region; however, all printed materials were published in Tosk until 1972, when a Congress of Orthography was convened in Tirana, and a unified Albanian language based on Tosk was established.
Religion
As a legacy of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule, Albania is a predominantly Muslim country. However, as a result of the rigid enforcement of atheism during the communist regime, today most Albanians are adherents of religious groups in name only and practice largely secular lifestyles. In 1967 the communist party officially proclaimed Albania an atheistic country and commenced to close all places of worship (churches, mosques, and zāwiyahs), confiscate their property, and ban religious observances. For the whole of its 45 years of absolute rule, the party engaged in large-scale persecution of believers. Only in 1990, when freedom of worship was restored, did churches and mosques begin reopening.
In the early 21st century about seven-tenths of the Albanian population was nominally Muslim, more than half of them Sunni Muslims and the next largest group being the Bektashi sect. Those who identified with Eastern Orthodoxy constituted about one-fifth of the population, and those associated with Roman Catholicism constituted about one-tenth. Muslims are spread throughout the country, although they particularly dominate the centre. Roman Catholics have settled primarily in the northern part of the country, mainly in the city of Shkodër, while Orthodox Christians are prominent in the southern districts of Gjirokastër, Korçë, Berat, and Vlorë. Mother Teresa, a Skopje-born ethnic Albanian who served as a Roman Catholic missionary to India in the 20th century, is a folk hero in Albania.
Settlement patterns
Albania’s mountain regions, being suitable mainly for pasture, traditionally saw sparse settlement, with small, often almost inaccessible villages of only a few dozen families each. Houses were built of stone and consisted of one or two rooms around a hearth. In the mountain valleys or basins, towns such as Elbasan, Korçë, and Berat developed as centres of local farming and trading.
Western Albania is much more densely populated, but, as a legacy of Ottoman rule, even such centres of the coastal plain as Tirana, Durrës, and Vlorë long remained small towns with virtually no industry. Following World War II, however, mass migration from the countryside doubled Albania’s urban population. During the communist period, planned communities were built in some parts of the countryside to house the workers of huge collective farms, many of which were built around formerly private estates. Following the collapse of communism, these farmers became independent smallholders. Even though rural-to-urban migration accelerated in the 1990s, in the early 21st century more than two-fifths of the country’s population still lived in rural areas. The urban population is generally evenly distributed among the country’s major cities, the largest of which is Tirana. Large apartment blocks, often with several units sharing kitchens and toilets, were built under communist rule, but, because the construction of new residences has been unable to keep pace with the movement from the countryside and with Albania’s high birth rate, cities are overcrowded, and there has been a proliferation of shanty dwellings.
Demographic trends
In the decades following World War II, the birth rate in Albania was consistently the highest in Europe and the death rate one of the continent’s lowest. Until the 1990s the Albanian population was increasing four to five times faster than the average annual rate in other European countries. Nearly all of the growth was due to natural increase rather than migration. Even though this explosive growth had slowed by the turn of the 21st century, Albania’s population remains one of the youngest in Europe, with about one-fifth of the total under age 15. The country’s natural increase rate, though slightly high compared with other European countries, dropped below the world average in the early 21st century.
At the beginning of the 21st century there were an estimated seven million ethnic Albanians in the world, but fewer than half of them lived within the boundaries of the Albanian state. The largest concentrations of Albanians outside Albania are in the bordering countries of Kosovo (where ethnic Albanians constitute a majority population), North Macedonia, and Montenegro. There are also Albanian communities in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania. Moreover, since the 1970s many Albanians have emigrated to western Europe and the United States.
During the Kosovo conflict of the late 1990s, the Serbian government responded to rising Kosovar Albanian nationalism with a reprisal decried as ethnic cleansing, which forced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee to Albania. By late 1999, however, following the mediation of the conflict, many of them had returned to Kosovo.
Economy of Albania
Before 1991 the ruling communist party directed the country’s entire economy through a series of five-year plans. All means of production were under state control, agriculture was fully collectivized, industry was nationalized, and private enterprise was strictly forbidden. In addition, a provision of the constitution prohibited the government from seeking foreign aid, accepting loans, or allowing foreign investment, which contributed to Albania’s reputation as isolationist. In the postcommunist period, economic decision making was decentralized, and restrictions on private trade were lifted. Foreign investment was pronounced by the mid-1990s, with assistance coming from the United States, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund. By the middle of that decade, Albania boasted the fastest-growing economy on the continent, but, as one of Europe’s poorest countries, it was still considered less developed.
Albania’s economic transition stumbled in 1997 when individual investors, constituting perhaps one-third of the country’s population, fell prey to a pyramid finance scheme that devastated the national economy and led to weeks of anarchy. A UN-sponsored multinational force was called to restore order. This chaos, compounded by the Kosovo conflict at the end of the decade, led to fractious political polarization that slowed the development of the Albanian economy for several years. Still, economic reform continued, and, at the beginning of the 21st century, Albania was recording modest annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Remittances from Albanians working abroad account for a significant amount of revenue. Although more than four-fifths of the economy has been privatized since the 1990s, the transformation process has been slow and uneven.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
The former communist government allocated substantial resources to the development of agriculture. Large-scale programs of land reclamation, soil improvement, and irrigation, as well as increased use of fertilizers, all contributed to a significant expansion of agricultural production. Despite these advances, agricultural production continued to be hindered by the persistence of traditional farming methods and low mechanization, which required a relatively high number of farmworkers. Measures intended to encourage the growth of food processing and agriculture were hampered by chronic shortages of basic foods, a failing infrastructure, a lack of raw materials, a shortage of skilled workers and managers, low productivity, and poor labour discipline. However, agriculture has registered annual growth during the postcommunist period.
About half of the economically active population is employed in agriculture, which contributes about one-fifth of Albania’s GDP. Only one-fourth of the total land area is arable, yet the country meets nearly all its food needs from domestic production. The main crops are wheat, corn (maize), sugar beets, and watermelons. Apples, plums, grapes, walnuts, and chestnuts are also grown. Citrus fruits are cultivated on the southern coast, as are figs and olives wherever there is sufficient irrigation. Major livestock are sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs.
Forests cover about one-third of Albania. The country has lost much of its forest area, however, due to clearance for agriculture, pasture, and fuel wood, which occurred mainly in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s the Albanian government joined with Italy and the World Bank to implement a forestry project, which included the strengthening of Albania’s environmental institutions and the introduction of sustainable forestry methods.
With access to both the Adriatic and Ionian seas, the Albanian fishing industry has great potential; however, due to a lack of professional fishermen and the use of antiquated equipment, it has not been fully developed. The catch in the Ionian Sea includes carp, trout, sea bream, mussels, and crustaceans. The country’s main fishing ports are at Sarandë, Vlorë, Shëngjin, and Durrës, the last of which is the country’s largest and most important. Port facilities have also been developed on inland lakes. The government has attempted to ban fishing of the letnica trout (known as koran in Albania), an endangered pink-meat fish found in Lake Ohrid. Family-run trout farms have increased in importance, as have shrimp farms and hatcheries. Anchovies imported from other Mediterranean countries are canned for export.
Resources and power
For a small country, Albania is endowed with considerable resources. The southwestern part of the country is rich in petroleum and natural gas. The northeastern and central mountain regions have substantial reserves of metallic mineral deposits, including chromium, copper, and iron-nickel. Deposits of lignite (soft coal) are found near Tirana, and natural asphalt is mined near Selenicë, by the southwest coast. In the 1980s Albania was a world leader in chromium production, but output fell precipitously in the early 1990s during the political transition from communism. Despite increased output by the mid-1990s, mining in all sectors fell again by the century’s end because of the poor recovery methods, obsolete machinery and equipment, lack of technical expertise, and poor organization that have characterized Albania’s efforts to exploit its resources.
The country is also rich with rivers and streams that have significant hydroelectric potential. These were exploited quite effectively at the end of the communist era, making the country an energy exporter. A number of huge hydroelectric power plants were built, mainly on the Drin River, and more than half of the country’s arable land was irrigated, largely from the artificial reservoirs created upstream of the dams. In the postcommunist period, though, energy exports fell, and internally Albania suffered from inadequate electrical service to large areas of the country. Chronic energy shortages continued into the 21st century.
Manufacturing
The former communist government’s policy of rapid industrialization, aimed at making the country as self-sufficient as possible, led to the creation of a relatively modern multibranched industry. Former strengths, however, such as the engineering and chemical industries, have fallen into decline. Manufacturing, together with mining, now generates only about one-tenth of national income and employs only a small percentage of the labour force. Leading manufactures are food and beverages, building materials, petroleum, textiles, and cement. Construction accounts for about one-eighth of Albania’s GDP. The economy has become increasingly service-oriented, yet it is often unable to meet the population’s demands for various consumer goods.
Finance
The national currency of Albania is the lek, which has been administered by the Bank of Albania since 1992. Prior to that time, numerous currencies had circulated through Albania because of its history of foreign occupation. Greece, Germany, and Turkey are Albania’s biggest foreign investors, providing about three-fourths of external investment in the 21st century. There is a stock exchange in Tirana.
Trade
Albania had a growing trade deficit in the early years of the 21st century. Its major trading partners include Italy, Greece, Turkey, Germany, and China. It exports textiles, footwear, and base metals. The principal imports are food products, machinery and equipment, spare parts, textiles, and minerals and metals.
Services
The service sector contributes about two-fifths of the country’s GDP and employs about one-fifth of the economically active population. Albania’s tourism sector was virtually nonexistent before 1992, and it remained relatively underdeveloped at the turn of the 21st century compared with the rest of the region, mainly due to poor infrastructure and political instability. Nevertheless, major restorations of architectural and cultural monuments and the construction of hotels and other tourist-oriented facilities along the coastline started to attract large numbers of visitors in the early 2000s. The 290-mile (470-km) coastline along the Adriatic is well known for its splendid beaches. Albania also has many archaeological treasures. A number of excavations in the late 20th and early 21st century have uncovered ruins and artifacts from antiquity. One of these archaeological sites is Butrint—at one time a Greek colony, a Roman city, and a Byzantine port—which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992 and a national park in 2000.
Labour and taxation
Unemployment in Albania is widespread, and about one-third of the population lives in poverty. Since the early 1990s, many younger Albanians have left the country to find work. The percentage of women in the workforce dropped drastically in the 1990s (from about three-fourths in 1989 to slightly less than half by the mid-2000s). While women have made gains professionally, economic problems and structural changes have eradicated many of their former jobs, leaving them to resort to working at domestic chores or on the family farm. The first independent labour unions and a national labour federation were formed in Albania in 1991. In 2008 Albania adopted a flat tax for both individuals and corporations, which replaced its progressive tax system.
Transportation and telecommunications
Albania built its first railroad in 1947, and during the next four decades Tirana was linked by rail to other major industrial centres in the country. The road network has been extended even to remote mountain villages, but surface quality can be poor. The leading port is Durrës, on the Adriatic Sea. The main air hub is in Tirana.
Most of the telecommunications sector in Albania was privatized in the early 21st century, and from the early 1990s to the early 2000s the number of mobile telephone users increased significantly. However, the country still has one of the lowest user-penetration rates for fixed-line telephones and Internet usage in all of Europe. Computer usage and Internet service are still virtually nonexistent in rural areas.
