In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and Arabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage.

There are daily broadcasts on the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution.

[6] The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below in angle brackets (preceded by the IPA notation): Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g., [ʌkʰˈme].

Possible syllable shapes are V, VV, VC, VVC, CV, CVV and CVVC.

[10] Officials from the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education, and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies and Enrichment Center have since worked with Afar linguists, authors and community representatives to select a standard orthography for Afar from among the various existing writing systems used to transcribe the language.