Best Guide on Algeria – 2021

Flag of Algeria

The flag of Algeria is pretty simple, just white, green and a red crescent and star the white representing peace, the green representing Islam and the crescent and star not only representing Islam, but the red of the crescent and star also representing the blood of those who fought for Algeria.
Algeria is the largest country in all of Africa, earlier this title used to belong to Sudan, however back in 2011, Sudan split up into two separate countries Decreasing their land mass and giving that title over to Algeria.
Algeria is located in the north African region known as the Maghreb, which is basically every North African country west of Egypt.
Algeria is also surrounded by six other countries in the area, although the Sahrawi people considers that Western Sahara is totally a separate country, and it belongs to them.
In the north, Algeria borders the Mediterranean Sea, Which has played a huge crucial role in its nationalistic development, and import – export economy.
Out of all the 48 provinces in Algeria, Over 90% of the entire population lives in the upper 37 provinces that border the Mediterranean Sea. The remaining 10 percent living in the lower provinces, which take up a land mass that is about 7 times the size of all the upper 37 provinces combined.
The provinces like Tindouf, and Illizi, although huge, barely even have 50,000 people inhabiting them.

An insight into the history and Geography of Algeria

If you look at a satellite map of Algeria, we can see only green part, is in the north by the Tell Atlas Mountain Range. The reason being that, this is pretty much the only region of Algeria that has a somewhat mild and wetter climate.
Only about 3% of Algeria’s land is arable, that’s not enough for them to sustain themselves agriculturally, and to this day, about 45% of their food comes from imports.
Atlas Mountain Range is in Saharan desert.
Algeria has also completed the daunting task of building several trans-Saharan roadways that go throughout the entire Saharan desert into their southern neighbor countries such as Niger, Mali and Mauritania.
Algeria has about 37 million people or roughly a little bit more than the size of Canada. The vast majority of these people identify as ethnically Arab – Berber, the Berbers are a semi-Nomadic people group who have historically occupied the region of the Maghreb for thousands of years, prior to any empire or colonial occupation or modern day country establishment.
The Berbers are a fascinating people group that have their own culture, history and language. About a third of Algerians speak the Berber language.
Algeria is with the only two countries in the world that considers Berber a national language. Morocco is the only one that makes it official, however Algerians really do recognize it.
Some of the Berbers in Algeria are also Sahrawi.
Sahrawis are basically people who believe that Western Sahara is theirs and it should belong to them and that it should become an independently recognized sovereign nation under their jurisdiction.
After Spain left in 1975 the jurisdiction of Western Sahara pretty much went to the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. Unfortunately, there was a third party that was not too happy with that – the Sahrawis.
The Polisario Front was established or the Liberation movement for the Sahrawi people in the Western Sahara. And they fought against both Mauritania and Morocco. Eventually, Mauritania backed down and Morocco somehow was able to take control of most of the major cities and resources and to this day it remains kind of under autonomous control under Morocco but the Sahrawis kind of take over the eastern part.
Algeria kind of gives refuge to the whole Polisario Front, in the very western city of Tindouf. After all the fights with Morocco and Mauritania, the only place that the Sahrawis really had left to go was Algeria.
When it comes to Algeria, they generally get along with all the other countries in the Maghreb region, but when it comes to the Polisario Front thing, it causes kind of a little bit of tension between them and Morocco.
Algeria is a strong supporter of the Sahrawi independence movement and Morocco is not.
In terms of business, Greece has always been one of their top trade partners, it also has friendly relations with Cyprus as it supports the Cyprus side of the Cyprus reunification movement. Which doesn’t really jive too well with Turkey.
In the early 1800s France occupied and settled Algeria and pretty much made it an overseas dependency. Over the next century of their occupation France greatly influenced the culture, the architecture, the cuisine and even the language.
To this day, French is the “de facto” language of Algeria.
Algerians and the French have a relatively well diplomatic relationship today. It’s almost kind of like the USA and England. Now in terms of their closest relationships, Algeria more or less might consider Tunisia and Libya their best friends considering that both countries support the Sahrawi independence movement and historically they’ve had a very rich cultural similarity and resonance with each other.
Algeria isn’t just another north African country but it’s a country that stands for things and survives and builds roads across the desert.