LANGUAGE: Modern Standard Arabic is used in schools, government offices and the media. In practice, Darja, the local Algerian dialect of Arabic, is more commonly used and varies from one region to another. French is frequently spoken in business, though this is less true outside Algeria’s main urban...
The oil price-induced economic difficulties facing Algeria may prove to be a double-edged sword: although the added pressures are certain to slow the rate of improvement in living standards and have already begun to strain public finances, the new circumstances also provide a pressing incentive for the country to slowly wean itself off its...
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) predominate among Algerian firms, forming the backbone of the private sector. At end-2016 Algeria’s 1m SMEs employed more than 2.5m people and engaged in some AD75bn ($622.1m) in bilateral trade. According to the Ministry of Industry, Algeria created an average of 60,000 SMEs per year in the 2012-15...
With an area of 2.38m sq km, Algeria became the largest country in Africa when the Republic of South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan in 2011. Located in the Maghreb region of North Africa, it has a Mediterranean coastline of just under 1000 km and land borders with seven countries and territories – Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco,...
The collapse in oil prices has weighed heavily on the Algerian economy, giving rise to wide twin deficits in the budget and current account. Given that the state is still heavily involved in the non-hydrocarbons sector of the economy, but depends on hydrocarbons exports for the bulk of its revenues, it is unsurprising that efforts to close the...
Algeria has long had complicated foreign relations, having tense ties with neighbouring Morocco, which has held back regional integration, while at the same time having strong trade relations with the EU, with which it signed a free trade accord in 2002. However, its international profile is in the midst of a gradual shift, as it seeks to...
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