Algeria - DZ - DZA - ALG - Africa

Algeria has known many empires and dynasties, including the ancient Numidians (3rd century B.C.), Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, over a dozen different Arab and Amazigh dynasties, Spaniards, and Ottoman Turks. Under the Turks, the Barbary pirates operated from North Africa and preyed on shipping, from about 1500 until the French captured Algiers in 1830. The French southward conquest of Algeria proceeded throughout the 19th century and was marked by many atrocities. A bloody eight-year struggle culminated in Algerian independence in 1962.

Algeria's long-dominant political party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), was established in 1954 as part of the struggle for independence and has since played a large role in politics, though it is falling out of favor with the youth and current President Abdelmadjid TEBBOUNE. The Government of Algeria in 1988 instituted a multi-party system in response to public unrest, but the surprising first-round success of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the 1991 legislative election led the Algerian military to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. An army crackdown on the FIS escalated into an FIS insurgency and intense violence from 1992-98 that resulted in over 100,000 deaths, many of which were attributed to extremist groups massacring villagers. The government gained the upper hand by the late 1990s, and FIS’s armed wing, the Islamic Salvation Army, disbanded in 2000. FIS membership is now illegal.

In 1999, Abdelaziz BOUTEFLIKA won the presidency with the backing of the military, in an election that was boycotted by several candidates protesting alleged fraud.  He won subsequent elections in 2004, 2009, and 2014. Widespread protests against his decision to seek a fifth term broke out in early 2019. BOUTEFLIKA resigned in April 2019, and in December 2019, Algerians elected former Prime Minister Abdelmadjid TEBBOUNE as the country’s new president. A longtime FLN member, TEBBOUNE ran for president as an independent. In 2020, Algeria held a constitutional referendum on governmental reforms, which TEBBOUNE enacted in 2021. Subsequent reforms to the national electoral law introduced open-list voting to curb corruption. The new law also eliminated gender quotas in Parliament, and the 2021 legislative elections saw female representation plummet. The referendum, parliamentary elections, and local elections saw record-low voter turnout.

For the first two thirds of the 20th century, Algeria's high fertility rate caused its population to grow rapidly. However, about a decade after independence from France in 1962, the total fertility rate fell dramatically from 7 children per woman in the 1970s to about 2.4 in 2000, slowing Algeria's population growth rate by the late 1980s. The lower fertility rate was mainly the result of women's rising age at first marriage (virtually all Algerian children being born in wedlock) and to a lesser extent the wider use of contraceptives. Later marriages and a preference for smaller families are attributed to increases in women's education and participation in the labor market; higher unemployment; and a shortage of housing forcing multiple generations to live together. The average woman's age at first marriage increased from about 19 in the mid-1950s to 24 in the mid-1970s to 30.5 in the late 1990s.

Algeria's fertility rate experienced an unexpected upturn in the early 2000s, as the average woman's age at first marriage dropped slightly. The reversal in fertility could represent a temporary fluctuation in marriage age or, less likely, a decrease in the steady rate of contraceptive use.

Thousands of Algerian peasants - mainly Berber men from the Kabylia region - faced with land dispossession and economic hardship under French rule migrated temporarily to France to work in manufacturing and mining during the first half of the 20th century. This movement accelerated during World War I, when Algerians filled in for French factory workers or served as soldiers. In the years following independence, low-skilled Algerian workers and Algerians who had supported the French (known as Harkis) emigrated en masse to France. Tighter French immigration rules and Algiers' decision to cease managing labor migration to France in the 1970s limited legal emigration largely to family reunification.

Not until Algeria's civil war in the 1990s did the country again experience substantial outmigration. Many Algerians legally entered Tunisia without visas claiming to be tourists and then stayed as workers. Other Algerians headed to Europe seeking asylum, although France imposed restrictions. Sub-Saharan African migrants came to Algeria after its civil war to work in agriculture and mining. In the 2000s, a wave of educated Algerians went abroad seeking skilled jobs in a wider range of destinations, increasing their presence in North America and Spain. At the same time, legal foreign workers principally from China and Egypt came to work in Algeria's construction and oil sectors. Illegal migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Malians, Nigeriens, and Gambians, continue to come to Algeria in search of work or to use it as a stepping stone to Libya and Europe.

Since 1975, Algeria also has been the main recipient of Sahrawi refugees from the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara (today part of Morocco). More than 100,000 Sahrawis are estimated to be living in five refugee camps in southwestern Algeria near Tindouf.

Algeria-Morocco: the Algerian-Moroccan land border remains closed; Algeria's border with Morocco remains an irritant to bilateral relations, each nation accusing the other of harboring militants and arms smuggling; the National Liberation Front's (FLN) assertions of a claim to Chirac Pastures in southeastern Morocco remain a dormant dispute

Algeria-Libya: dormant dispute includes Libyan claims of about 32,000 sq km still reflected on its maps of southeastern Algeria

Algeria-Mali: none identified

Algeria-Mauritania: none identified

Algeria-Niger: none identified

Algeria-Tunisia: none identified