Reports

Long before Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down in April 2019, it was clear that the crony oligarchy he fronted for – known to ordinary Algerians as “the system” – could not last. If the wheelchair-bound leader looked moribund after a series of strokes, so did the country's ...

Street demonstrations have forced Algeria’s president to resign and Sudan’s to declare a year-long state of emergency. In both countries, these popular revolts are challenging entrenched regimes that successfully weathered the Arab Spring protests of 2011. Can this unexpected coda to the revolutions that opened an unhappy decade in the ...

Algerians realize they have a historic opportunity to remove the country’s ruling coterie. Yet as the protest movement grows and the momentum for regime change builds, there is reason to worry about what the people are hoping for.

After nearly two decades under the leadership of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria will face several challenges when he ultimately leaves office. The new era will come at a time when Algeria’s economic, energy, and security situations are also in transition. As the country is an important regional actor on terrorism ...

Algeria seems headed down a road already taken by other resource-rich authoritarian countries like Venezuela. Low oil and gas prices have made it harder for a crony oligarchy to buy off the public with subsidies and benefits. Their latest expedient to stave off reforms is to use the central bank ...

Algeria's perennial problems are reaching crisis levels. The economic outlook is so dire that street violence is a distinct possibility. Its political scene is paralyzed by a seemingly endless succession crisis involving the ailing 78-year-old president, Abdulaziz Bouteflika. Legislative elections earlier this month did nothing to stop the drift. If ...

Algeria has not been in such dire straits since it declared independence from France in 1962. The challenges the country faces today make its “bloody decade” during the 1990s, when conflict with the Armed Islamic Group (AIG) killed tens of thousands, seem like a time of stability and prosperity. It ...

The global drop in oil prices has analysts mulling over the shrinking profitability of the oil industry. But it is not all doom and gloom. On the contrary, companies may be in a stronger position today to negotiate better deals with host governments, compared with when prices were high. <i>Oil ...

Algeria has experienced development problems since its independence from France in 1962, despite its wealth of natural resources. Oil and gas have turned into a 'resource curse' which has enabled a closed, crony system in power to extract rents at the expense of the majority of the population, who are ...

Algeria faces big challenges ahead, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika likely to be nearing the end of his 14-year term in office and opposition forces lining up to disrupt the status quo when he goes. The internal instability which could follow comes at time of growing turmoil in the region and ...

Al-Qaeda is rarely out of world headlines. In recent months, the name has cropped up in reports of violence from Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Mali. Al-Qaeda is just one of a number of Sunni Muslim groups which embrace the Salafi ideology, a doctrine which advocates a return to the strict ...

The militant Islamist attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria reminded the international community of North Africa’s political fragility and its tenuous security. Before the attack, most oil and gas companies did not consider Algeria as a particularly attractive investment destination. But the January 2013 incident will have ...