Algeria

Full name of country: People's Democratic Republic of Algeria

Region: Africa

Official language: Arabic

Population: 47,022,473 (2024 est.)

Nationality: Algerian(s) (noun), Algerian (adjective)

Land area: 2,381,741 sq km (919,595 sq miles)

Capital: Algiers

National anthem: "Kassaman" (We Pledge), by Mufdi Zakariah/Mohamed Fawzi

National holiday: Revolution Day, November 1 (1954)

Population growth: 1.54% (2024 est.)

Time zone: UTC + 1

Flag: The flag of Algeria features two equal vertical bars of green, encompassing the hoist side, and white, encompassing the fly side. Centered in the flag are an embossed star and crescent, in red; the symbol universally represents Islam. The green and white colors of the flag symbolize nature and peace, respectively, while the red of the star and crescent represents the blood that was shed in the struggle for independence.

Motto: “By the people and for the people”

Independence: July 5, 1962 (from France)

Government type: republic

Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal

Legal system: mixed legal system of French civil law and Islamic law; judicial review of legislative acts in ad hoc Constitutional Council composed of various public officials including several Supreme Court justices

The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is a North African nation on the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania.

Algeria's history since the early 1800s has been one of almost continual conflict. Annexed by France in 1830, Algeria began an eight-year war of independence in 1954. After independence, secular and religious political forces clashed, and the country was wracked by civil war from 1991 to 2002. In 2011, during the Arab Spring that swept across North Africa and the Middle East, Algerian citizens held protests, some of which turned violent. In the wake of the uprising, the Algerian government lifted emergency restrictions that had been in place for almost twenty years. Further protests in 2019 led to the first new presidential administration in two decades and a series of reforms.

Algeria has made great strides in health, education, and living standards since independence, but there is still work to be done. The government-controlled economy depends heavily on oil and gas production, but these resources have not solved the problems of dire poverty and high unemployment.

Note: unless otherwise indicated, statistical data in this article is sourced from the CIA World Factbook, as cited in the bibliography.

People and Culture

Population: The vast majority of Algerians are a mixture of Berber and Arab. Only about 15 percent consider themselves primarily Berber. Less than 1 percent of the population is of European descent.

While Arabic is the official language, French is widely spoken. Since independence, however, a deliberate attempt has been made to remove French influence. For this reason, Arabic is the language for legal proceedings and instruction. Tamazight, a Berber language, has been granted official status as well. Other Berber dialects are also spoken by small groups.

The majority of the population lives along the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip. Some live in the plateau area just south of the coast, and a small percentage live on oases in the desert.

The country's largest city is the capital, Algiers, with a metro population of approximately 2.902 million (2022 estimate), located on the coast. Another major city is Oran, with a population of 936,000 in 2022.

The state religion is Islam, but there is some disagreement about its role in society and politics. Most of the population (99 percent) is Muslim, predominantly Sunni. Some Arab citizens, and almost all of those of European descent, are Christians. Christian denominations include Roman Catholic, Protestant Church of Algeria, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Coptic. Though Algeria once had a significant Jewish population, the majority emigrated to France and Israel in the 1960s, after the newly independent Algerian government passed a law denying citizenship to non-Muslim residents of the country. The Algerian Civil War in the 1990s, in which the government fought several different groups of Islamist insurgents, drove most of the remaining Jewish population out.

Indigenous People: Algeria has been inhabited by the Berbers for about five thousand years. During the seventh century, Arabs began to migrate to Algeria from the Arabian Peninsula. The two groups have intermarried so much that it is impossible to distinguish the ancestry of most modern Algerians. Despite the fact that nearly all have Berber heritage, the majority of Algerians consider themselves Arab. However, a minority identify instead with their Berber cultural heritage, and maintain separate customs and languages. These people live primarily in the mountainous Kabylie region, east of Algiers. Some have continued to press for autonomy, and the struggle has at times become violent.

Education: Education in Algeria is free at all levels and compulsory from ages six to sixteen. Children attend primary school from ages six through ten. Secondary education is divided into two cycles, with students aged eleven to fourteen attending lower secondary school and those aged fifteen to seventeen in upper secondary school.

Most instruction in primary and secondary schools is in Arabic, but since 2003, the Berber language Tamazight has also been permitted. In the universities, French is generally the language of instruction.

Algeria has numerous universities. The University of Algiers is the oldest in the country. It was established in 1909, combining schools of medicine, pharmacy, science, letters and law, which had been founded in 1879.

The government has tried to improve education and increased the national budget allocation. But the population of Algeria keeps growing, and the number of teachers keeps shrinking, partly because foreign teachers were removed after independence. Incidence of violence in the 1990s, which included terrorist attacks, also caused damage to the country's education infrastructure.

The literacy rate in Algeria was estimated at 81.4 percent—87.4 percent among men and 75.3 percent among women—in 2018.

Health Care: Algeria's health care system has made great strides since independence. In the mid-1950s there was only one doctor for every 33,000 people, and the infant mortality rate was 154 deaths per 1,000 births. Today, these ratios have improved, with 1.72 doctors for every 1,000 people by 2018 and an infant mortality rate of 18.7 per 1,000 live births in 2024.

Medicine, medical care, and hospitalization are free for Algerian citizens. Most of the population has access to medical care, and the emphasis is on preventing disease rather than just curing illnesses.

With increased access to improved sanitation (96.5 percent of the population according to 2020 estimates) and clean water (99.4 percent), many high-risk diseases have been greatly reduced or eliminated. There is still some risk of food- or waterborne diseases such as bacterial diarrhea, typhoid fever, and hepatitis A, and the parasitic disease cutaneous leishmaniasis. In 2023 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that Algeria was among the African nations at high risk to travelers for polio.

Algeria's 2020 health expenditure was 6.3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 77.9 years overall in 2024. Algeria was ranked 93 out of 193 countries and territories on the 2022 United Nations Human Development Index.

Food: The Algerian diet is high in grains such as wheat and barley. The national dish is couscous, a form of steamed semolina wheat, served with chicken or lamb, vegetables, and a sauce. Burek, made of mixed meat, onion, and egg in phyllo pastry, is another popular dish.

Other traditional foods include mechoui, or charcoal-roasted lamb; merguez, a spicy lamb sausage; chorba, a spicy lamb or chicken stew with vegetables and fresh herbs; and dolma, a variety of spicy meat-stuffed vegetables. French cuisine is also common in urban areas.

Tea with fresh mint leaves is Algeria's most popular drink. Other beverages include fruit juices and strong Turkish coffee served with a glass of water on the side.

Desserts are often pastries, such as chacab, crescent-shaped pastries filled with almonds; kalb-el-louz, semolina with almond paste and rosewater; and griouche, a pastry filled with honey.

Although in urban areas most foods are eaten with utensils, some traditional foods are eaten with the hands. In this case, only the right hand may touch the food. To be polite, guests leave a little food on the plate. This acknowledges that the host is able to adequately feed visitors.

Arts & Entertainment: Islamic design strongly influences Algerian artwork and architecture (such as the domed mosques). Algeria is known for its jewelry, rugs and pottery, which use Islamic designs as well as traditional techniques.

Algerian music is appreciated at home and abroad. The country's most prominent musical form is rai, which includes elements of European, African, and Arab musical styles.

Pre-independence painters and writers showed a strong French influence, but more Arabic and Berber designs may be seen in works created since 1962. Existentialist author and philosopher Albert Camus, best known for his novel The Stranger (1942), was born in Algeria in 1913. Philosopher and literary critic Jacques Derrida was born in Algeria in 1930. Contemporary Algerian authors now write in Arabic instead of French.

When it comes to sports, football (soccer) is most popular. The national football team competes in the Olympics, and the junior team competes internationally. Numerous local teams are also supported by regional fans.

Algeria's national boxing team also competes in the Olympics. In addition, Algeria has internationally competing teams in sports such as handball, volleyball, swimming, women's tennis, table tennis, track and cycling.

Holidays: Many Algerian holidays are celebrated in observance of the country's political history. Official secular holidays include New Year's Day (January 1) Yennayer/Berbers New Year (January 12), Labor Day (May 1), Independence Day (July 5), and the Anniversary of the Revolution (November 1). Berbers New Year

Muslim holidays, including Ramadan, Islamic New Year, the prophet Muhammad's birthday, and others, are widely celebrated in Algeria. Many holiday dates vary because they depend on the Islamic lunar calendar.

Environment and Geography

Topography: The second-largest country in Africa (after Sudan), Algeria is almost 3.5 times as large as the American state of Texas. Algeria is bordered on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by Tunisia and Libya, on the south by Mali and Niger, and on the west by Morocco and Mauritania. Algeria has three distinct topographical regions, the Tell, the high plateaus, and the Sahara Desert.

The Tell is the strip along the coast, ranging from 130 to 320 kilometers (80 to 200 miles) wide. The Tell is marked by gently rolling hills and the country's richest farmland in the west. Rugged mountains in the east terminate in the Tell Atlas Mountains on the southern edge of the area.

South of the Tell Atlas Mountains are the high plateaus, rising from 400 to 1,300 meters (1,300 to 4,300 feet). The area is used for grazing livestock.

Swamps and chotts (or shats), which are shallow salt lakes, form in large depressions among the plateaus during the rainy season. The largest depression, with a total area of 61,000 square kilometers (23,552 square miles), contains two salt lakes: Chott Melshir and Chott Merouane. The intermittent Lake Sebkha d'Oran, near the coast, covers 296 square kilometers (114 square miles).

About 80 percent of the country is covered by the northern Sahara Desert. This area is marked by sand dunes in some places and by bare rock, boulders and stones in others. The Saharan Atlas Mountains rise on the northern edge of the desert, and the Ahaggar Mountains rise in the southeastern desert region.

The highest elevation is Mount Tahat, rising 2,918 meters (9,573 feet) in the Ahaggar Mountains. The lowest point is Chott Melrhir, at 31 meters (102 feet) below sea level.

A few small rivers flow through the coastal region. The longest is the Chelif River, which rises in the Atlas Mountains and flows for 679 kilometers (422 miles) north and west to empty into the Mediterranean east of Oran.

Natural Resources: Algeria's major natural resources include significant deposits of petroleum and natural gas, plus iron ore, phosphates, uranium, lead and zinc. Algeria had 4.504 trillion cubic meters of proven natural gas reserves according to 2021 estimates, and 12.2 billion barrels of estimated crude oil reserves in 2021.

Poor farming practices, such as overgrazing, have resulted in soil erosion. Rivers and coastal waters are becoming polluted by industrial and petroleum wastes and raw sewage. The sea is further polluted by oil, silt and fertilizer runoff. Drinkable water is scarce in Algeria.

Plants & Animals: The northern forests were nearly destroyed during the war for independence when the French bombed the area with napalm (jellied gasoline). Many cork oak trees have been replanted. Other trees found in Algeria include Aleppo pine and juniper in the mountains, and fig trees and olive groves in other areas. Date palms and acacias grow in the Sahara.

Indigenous grapevines are common, and the plateaus are covered with pastures of drinn and esparto grasses.

Common wild animals include wild boars, fennecs (a kind of fox), African pygmy hedgehogs, Barbary macaques, gazelles, jerboas, panthers, leopards, cheetahs and jackals. Reptiles such as monitor lizards and many species of birds are also numerous.

Among Algeria's endangered animals is the Mediterranean monk seal, partly because the animals reproduce slowly. Also, coastal pollution and over fishing threaten their habitat. Several bat species and the Algerian wild dogs are also endangered.

Climate: Algeria's climate is semiarid to arid. The coast experiences mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. The high plateaus are drier, and experience hot summers and cold winters. The Sahara is extremely hot.

Coastal temperature averages range from about 11 degrees to 25 degrees Celsius (52 degrees to 77 degrees Fahrenheit). Algiers, on the coast, has a temperature range of approximately 9 degrees to 29 degrees Celsius (48 degrees to 84 degrees Fahrenheit). Winter nights can be quite cold, with frost and snow, even after very warm days.

The Sahara has the greatest extremes of temperatures. In the summer, daytime temperatures can reach up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Winter temperatures can drop suddenly to as low as 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit). Daily temperatures vary widely when the sirocco, a hot, dry, wind full of dust and sand, blows across the desert during the summer.

The Tell receives the most rain, averaging 40 to 80 centimeters (16 to 32 inches) annually. At elevations above 900 meters (3,000 feet), precipitation is often in the form of snow. The rainy season lasts from September to May.

Economy

Although the country has made great strides since independence, Algeria suffers from high unemployment, lack of market diversification, and poor credit access. The economy is also highly vulnerable to volatility in oil prices due to the reliance on hydrocarbon exports. In 2023, the GDP (purchasing power parity) was estimated at $699.947 billion, or $15,300 per capita (in 2023 US dollars).

Industry:Algeria's energy sector is the dominant industry in the nation's economy. The government controls the development, refining, and distribution of gas and petroleum, as well as the manufacture of iron and steel, textiles and construction materials.

Chief exports include petroleum and petroleum products, fertilizers, and chemicals. Algeria's main export partners are Italy, France, and Spain.

Algerian mines produce iron ore, phosphates, uranium, lead, and zinc. Most of the natural gas and petroleum deposits are under the Sahara. Algeria is among the world's largest exporters of natural gas, helping to meet the energy needs of Europe and the United States.

Agriculture: Just over 3 percent of Algeria's land is arable. The main crops grown are cereals, grapes, olives, citrus, and other fruits. Sheep and cattle are the principal livestock. Livestock products include cow's milk, beef and veal, poultry, sheep's milk and mutton and lamb.

Residents of the Sahara live on oases where there are underground springs. These springs help to irrigate dates and grain. Desert nomads move among grazing areas to feed their camels, sheep, and other animals.

Tourism:Tourism is an important part of the Algerian economy, though there have been challenges to further growth. The number of tourists annually had been increasing steadily since the 1990s, but fell off sharply in the wake of regional unrest in the mid-2010s. While numbers recovered by 2018, further political unrest in 2019 and the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused another sharp dropoff.

Popular tourist attractions include the Mediterranean coast, the Atlas Mountains, and the Sahara. Many tourists visit Algiers to view the historic Casbah, the oldest part of the city.

Government

Algeria is a republic, with universal adult suffrage at age eighteen. It is a multiparty state, but political parties must be approved by the Ministry of the Interior.

The president is the head of state. The president is directly elected to a five-year term, and is limited to two terms. The president presides over the Council of Ministers and the High Security Council. The president also appoints the prime minister, who is the head of government. The prime minister appoints the Council of Ministers.

The bicameral legislature consists of the National People's Assembly (al-Majlis al-Sha'abi al-Watani), whose 407 members are elected directly by all voters, and the 174-member Council of the Nation (Majlis al-Umma).

Two-thirds of the members of the Council of the Nation are elected indirectly from among regional and municipal authorities. The remaining third are appointed by the president. Council terms are six years, and one-half of the members are replaced every three years.

The country is divided into fifty-eight wilayas, or provinces, and these are divided into daïras or districts. Each wilaya has an elected assembly.

Algeria's incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was re-elected for a second term in September 2024, with 94.6% of the vote.

Interesting Facts

• Algeria is the largest country in Africa; it was the second-largest before South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011.
• Clementine oranges are named for Father Clement, a French priest who "discovered" them in the early 1900s, near Oran, Algeria.
• The term "casbah" refers to the older section of a city, featuring narrow, crowded streets crammed with houses and shops. Newer sections feature wide streets, tall buildings and open-air markets.
• Women's traditional dress, worn mostly in rural areas, is the haik, a long, white garment covering the head and lower face and the body down to the feet. Traditional men's clothing includes a long, hooded cloak called a burnoose.
• Ouargla, Algeria, experienced the hottest temperatures in modern African history in July 2018. The city reached 124.3 degrees Fahrenheit (51.3 degrees Celsius).

Bibliography

"Algeria." Human Development Reports, United Nations Development Programme, 13 Mar. 2024, hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/DZA. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

"Algeria." The World Bank, data.worldbank.org/country/algeria. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

"Algeria." The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 15 Jan. 2025., www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/algeria/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

"Algeria." BBC News, BBC Country Profiles, 9 Sep. 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14118852. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.