Algeria

With large domestic demand, an available workforce and emerging industrial capacity, Algeria is set to restart its automotive manufacturing sector after years of being out of operation. Despite growing sales of vehicles over the past few years, the country has lacked local manufacturing facilities. However, interest in supplying the rising demand...

At a press conference in September 2013, Algeria’s minister of energy and mines, Youcef Yousfi, announced that hydrocarbons giant Sonatrach had made some “very important” and “extremely promising” gas finds and that the country’s natural gas reserves were “not falling, but rising”.

One aspect of Algeria’s push to diversify national revenue sources away from the hydrocarbons sector is to strengthen activity in regional markets outside of cities like Algiers or Oran, to foster job creation in outlying wilayas (provinces) and cultivate secondary and tertiary industries throughout. While in many cases the initiatives...