Algeria is a resource-rich country with a strong and diversified economy.
The classic economic assets of Algeria
- Competitive labor and energy costs
- Human resources: Well educated youth with 68% of the population under 35 years old
- Geography: a hub to Africa (trans-Saharan road) and the Arab zone and proximity with Europe.
- Infrastructures: airports, ports, highways, roads, railroads
- Algeria is almost debtless with the early payment of its external debt.
Diversification
The core of Algeria’s recent economic policy has been the diversification of the economy. This has been a largely successful program.
Mineral mining has been boosted with a new legislation in 2014, that attempts to facilitate the mining of the largely untapped resources of iron, zinc, and phosphate.
The IT sector is growing with many investments in technology parks and internet access. Especially the latter has been hugely successful with internet penetration ramping up from 21% in 2014 to 46% in 2015. A young and educated workforce creates an extra potential for the IT sector.
The tourism sector is very promising with a large cultural and geographical diversity and the world’s 4th most competitive price level (World Economic Forum). While turmoil in other North African countries has caused damage to the tourism industry of the whole area, Algeria’s unique stability is likely to become an increasingly positive factor in the future.
Political environment
According to Oxford Business Group (2016), Algeria has “been able to maintain an impressive degree of stability” despite the turmoil in other North African countries. The political situation is very stable and security situation is better than it has been since the civil war in 90’s.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure investment has created for much enthusiasm recently. Three impressive highway projects are nearing completion: the Hauts Plateaux Highway is set to cross 1000km of high altitude areas, The East-West Highway – one of the world’s largest public work projects – will soon run across the whole country, and the Trans-Saharan highway is set to connect Algiers to Lagos. Algeria’s rail network is almost 5000km long. It is set to double soon due to 7bn euros allocated to railway development between 2015 and 2019.
Safety
Algeria is a peaceful country, and was ranked world’s 7th safest country by a 2017 US Gallup Poll.
Languages
The official and national languages are Arabic and Berber, but French is used widely, especially in the cities. Also English is spoken well in the business world.