Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
- Thread starter TommyHilltrigga
- Start date
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
thatrapsfan
Superstar
Agree CIV growth is not inclusive but inclusive growth is a challenge facing the entire world. What is different in the CIV case however as that it appears to have a government looking to leverage strong performance off commodities for other sectors. Their investment in infrastructure appears very promising and its the sort of thing that can lead to dividends for all society.
I actually agree with your general take on problem with extractive economies and the likes of Chad and Gabon, but both are states run by entrenched dictators who are blatant in their goal to fatten their pockets. My point is that there is a diversity of governance types/ economies in Francophone Africa. Some authortitain, others not. Some economies with positive attributes, others with very few. I find Anglophone Africans often caricature all of Francophone Africa as one big servile colony. My main qualm is that its not!
Speaking of Chad, you reminded me that Idris Deby was a recent loud voice for dropping the CFA Franc.:
President Deby of Chad reignited the debate as his country celebrated 55 years of independence from France. He said in August that nations should start minting their own currencies as a way of distancing themselves from their colonial masters.
Loveless Union Shelters Timbuktu to Congo From Currency Turmoil
Frangala
All Star
Interesting here I thought Deby only worried about his power and pockets now he is on his Pan-Africanism tip.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
@thatknickfan
Wasn't Outtara placed in power by the French?
Sure, generalizations don't help the studies of relations between France and its former African domains, but its relationship is certainly more paternalistic compared to say, Britain.
Wasn't Outtara placed in power by the French?
Sure, generalizations don't help the studies of relations between France and its former African domains, but its relationship is certainly more paternalistic compared to say, Britain.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
I don't trust Deby. Perhaps it is because I'm Nigerian but he 'rode the tiger' regarding Boko Haram.
thatrapsfan
Superstar
Ouattara won an election breh, he wasn't imposed on anyone. Gbagbo and others played on regional/ethnic fault lines within CIV in an attempt to stop him from gaining power. It started decades before it eventually exploded. Yeah the French preferred Ouattara and helped tip the rebels hand in the ensuing conflict, but that says little about his legitimacy. Dude won a legitimate recognized election and Gbagbo tried to flip the script.@thatknickfan
Wasn't Outtara placed in power by the French?
Sure, generalizations don't help the studies of relations between France and its former African domains, but its relationship is certainly more paternalistic compared to say, Britain.
As far as what he's done since, it can be evaluated on its own merits. The country still hasn't dealt with many of political faultines created by the war but fair to say IMO that hes done a stellar job economically.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
Fair. I was only noting that French military intervention allowed Outtara to become President of Ivory Coast.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
Après Zuma: Can the African Union save itself? | Pambazuka News
Après Zuma: Can the African Union save itself?
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Jan 12, 2017
The upcoming AU Summit will be “closed”, allowing only the accredited delegations and staff to participate in and witness its deliberations. What is clear is that it will give the current class of Africa’s Heads of State a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-shape the organization.
The African Union (AU) has until its summit in Addis Ababa at the end of January 2017 to rescue itself from institutional sclerosis. A coincidence of fiscal, succession, diplomatic and governance crises jostling for the attention of its forthcoming summit will afford the bi-annual conclave of Africa’s rulers a rare opportunity to re-invent the organization or risk irrelevance before respectable company. Without a reputation, however, for bold, imaginative decision making, the odds remain slim that the outcome of the summit will be anything more than business as usual. That will be a debacle for the organization and the continent.
A fiscal crisis long in the making
As with many things, the origins of the AU’s crises begin with money. For too long, it has been quite poorly funded. Many sub-regional organisations, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and, for a long time, Colonel Khaddafi’s Community of Sahelo-Saharan African States (CEN-SAD), were much better funded. Despite their fondness for the empty pomp and circumstance of their ritual annual summits, many of the continent’s rulers were always reluctant to pick the tabs for running the organization. As the role of the AU in regional peace and security has grown in the last two decades, much of its appropriations have come from non-African countries in Europe and North America, all too happy to outsource potential African military and diplomatic landmines. The AU has been equally happy to grab the money.
The AU began to look for solutions to this untenable position in in 2001. Ten years later, in 2011, they invited Nigeria’s former ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo, to lead a review of the AU’s funding. After receiving the report of the Obasanjo review, a retreat of Africa’s Presidents and Foreign Ministers in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, on 16 July 2016 agreed “to conduct a study on the institutional reform of the African Union (AU).” Two days later, the AU Summit meeting in Kigali requested Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, to lead the study and “report on the proposed reforms and thus put in place a system of governance capable of addressing the challenges facing the Union.” President Kagame’s report will be on the agenda at the Addis Ababa summit.
A crisis of institutional succession
Also in Kigali, the AU was supposed to have elected a successor to the spectacularly inept tenure of the Chairperson of its Commission – as the AU Secretariat is now called – South Africa’s Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Much of Dr. Dlamini-Zuma’s tenure, sadly, was spent in pursuit of her undisguised ambitions to succeed to South Africa’s presidency. Not content with being inept, she was also distracted. Under her watch, the continent’s priorities marinated interminably, acknowledged episodically in a half-hearted press release or with a shout out on her Twitter handle. The credentials of the candidates on parade to replace her in Kigali were indifferent. Faced with this line up of choice without change, the Kigali Summit decided to kick the can of elections down the road by six months.
Four months later, however, well into his stride on the brief to reform the AU, President Kagame reportedly requested the AU to defer the elections pending the completion and consideration of his report. If his recommendations are adopted, it is argued, they may re-define the structures, processes and person specifications for the job. Many of his peers, however, are already fully invested in the campaign to replace Dr. Dlamini-Zuma. Botswana, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya and Senegal have candidates. Their presidents and their envoys are criss-crossing the continent, negotiating bargains and grubbing for votes. Few of them seem prepared to suspend their ambitions for continental conquest until President Kagame’s yet undisclosed reform proposals.
The outcome of the Addis-Ababa Summit will hinge on the somewhat procedural issue of what takes precedence: consideration of Kagame’s reform proposals or the elections to the AU Commission. If the Heads settle for the former, the likelihood will be a hold-over Commission, possibly with Kenya’s Erastus Mwencha, the current Deputy Chairperson of the AU Commission, at the helm in acting capacity. This may not be entirely unacceptable to Kenya which has run an energetic campaign on behalf of its candidate. If not, then the Summit will be consumed by election fever. Either way, few will mourn the exit of Dr. Dlamini-Zuma.
A crisis for regional diplomacy and governance
Whether the elections take place or not may hinge on and determine the outcome of Morocco’s application to re-join the continental body that it left in 1984, following the recognition of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). As an implicit condition for its re-admission, the King of Morocco has personally waged a full-court press garnished with ostentatious royal generosity, asking African countries to throw the SADR out of the continental body. The historical claims of the SADR are well founded in the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitutive Act of the African Union, as well as judicial opinions of the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, among others.
To achieve its goals, Morocco needs the votes of two-thirds or 36 member states of the AU, the same number needed to install a new Chair of the Commission. At the Kigali Summit in July 2016, up to 28 countries (out of 54) appeared prepared to vote to exclude SADR from the body.
The leaders who meet in Addis-Ababa may need to be reminded that the first objective of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), predecessor to the AU, was de-colonisation. Morocco’s mission of perpetually annexing the Saharawi subverts this. As a pre-condition for granting its application, the AU could easily require Morocco to renounce all claims to the territory of the Saharawi. As a stop-gap measure, they could also refer the question of the legal status of the SADR to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights for a judicial opinion to govern the diplomatic and political decisions thereafter.
The other issue is The Gambia. At the end of 2016, Gambia’s mirthless president, His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhajie Dr. Yahya Abdul-Aziz Awal Jemus Junkung Jammeh, Naasiru Deen Babili Mansa, (Colonel Retired), Commander-in-Chief of The Armed Forces and Chief Custodian of the Sacred Constitution of the Gambia – to afford him his full entitlement to gibberish - conceded after clearly losing a general election whose outcome he could not pre-determine (despite his best efforts). More than a week after his concession, however, Jammeh claimed non-existent powers to annul the election, requisition a fresh one, and sit tight in the interim. Thereafter, he sent soldiers to ransack the premises of the electoral commission, exile its leadership and has generally given regional leaders mediating this manufactured impasse the run-around.
A “closed Summit”
Each of these issues on its own would be very weighty. Together, they add up to a very formidable menu that begs the summiteers in Addis-Ababa not to create a mess. If the Summit accedes to the plan put forward by President Kagame, it could defer the ballot to fill the vacancies in the AU Commission. If not, then a vote will proceed. It’s too early to handicap the process but the early indications are that Kenya’s Amina Mohammed and Senegal’s Abdoulaye Bathily could be ahead. A dark-horse cannot, however, be ruled out. Morocco, still not a member of the AU, is reportedly weighing in with diplomatic savvy in favour of a candidate whom it considers more favourably disposed to its divisive designs. The outcome could hinge on the inclinations of Algeria and Nigeria, both strong supporters of the SADR. If both remain implacable, a hung Summit could ensue.
Many are praying for the Gambian issue to be resolved before the Summit. Effectively, Mr. Jammeh has foisted a classic unconstitutional regime on the country, contrary to the norms and standards of the AU. The Gambia is due to inaugurate a new president next week on 19 January but it is unclear whether this will happen. If it doesn’t, Mr. Jammeh will become an issue for the AU Summit. Should this come to pass, many of his AU peers could be far from well placed to tell Mr. Jammeh what to do because they too have run carts and horses over the will of their people and the rules in their own constitutions.
In the language of the AU, the Summit will be “closed”, allowing only the accredited delegations and staff to participate in and witness its deliberations. What is clear is that it will give the current class of Africa’s Heads of State a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-shape the organization. It could mark a break with business-as-usual in the AU. But if they prove unwilling or unable to see the opportunities or to take them, few will be persuaded to take the AU seriously thereafter.
Is Algeria heading for a late Arab Spring?
Algeria may have the right ingredients for a full-blown popular uprising, but the newly healed scars of the last civil war make Algerians think twice about revolting.
Algeria is already reeling from a revolution that took place in 1988, which was followed by a decade of civil war that killed thousands.
Algeria has been a rare phenomenon in that it was immune to the Arab Spring. Despite sharing similarities with its North African counterparts, Algeria remained relatively stable while a trend of sweeping rebellions toppled governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Why is it that when Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire out of protest in a suburb of Tunis in December 2010, sparking an explosion of pent up frustration across the Arab world, Algerians on the most part were unaffected?
Is Algeria really an exception in the Arab world, or is it heading towards the same fate as other North African countries?
Too many eggs in one basket
With around 40 million people, Algeria is the second most populous country in North Africa after Egypt. And despite its 1,600 kilometre-long coastline on the Mediterranean, it has not become a popular tourism destination, unlike its neighbours Morocco and and Tunisia.
Gas plants in rural parts of Algeria have face attacks from Al Qaeda militants, a further put off for international investors. [AFP]
Instead, the country depends heavily on natural gas exports for income. In fact, around 60 percent of the state budget comes from oil and gas exports, which account for about 97 percent of all exports from Algeria. The country is currently the third largest gas supplier to Europe after Russia and Norway.
But the dip in international oil and gas prices in recent years has sent the Algerian economy tumbling. Decreasing demand in Europe had already seen gas oil and exports to the continent decline since 2009.
Cash running out
Algeria has an increasingly disgruntled young population that suffers from high unemployment and poverty. In addition, the country is experiencing a major housing crisis, topped off with high consumer prices, low salaries and a widening gap between social classes.
The crisis has forced the government to delve deep into its foreign exchange reserves. “Total reserves have fallen from $194 billion in 2013 to an estimated $108 billion in 2016 and are projected to decline further to $60 billion in 2018,” a World Bank report states.
Algeria's central bank has warned that if this slide continues, the country’s foreign exchange reserves could diminish. Despite this, state-owned energy firm Sonatrach, which generates approximately 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, announced it would pump $90 billion into new projects by 2020 to encourage investment.
Rigid bureaucracy
But heavy regulations and high taxes make the Algerian energy sector an extremely difficult place for investors to make a profit. Laws stipulate that Sonatrach takes at least a 51 percent stake in oil and gas deals with international partners.
The Algerian government then taxes up to 90 percent of revenue made from such deals. Due to bureaucratic hurdles, it can also take up to 17 years for energy firms operating in Algeria to start the production process, around three times longer than the global average. Therefore, two recent energy bidding tenders failed to generate much interest.
A 2016 report on the impact of low oil prices on Algeria said that companies like Sonatrach need to “finance their investments” to return to the international market, but argues that it is “highly debatable that this would be financially feasible for Sonatrach.”
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the 80-year-old president of Algeria, has been wheelchair-bound and generally out of the public eye since suffering a stroke in 2014. [AFP]
No long-term plan
When the Arab Spring kicked off in 2011, around a quarter of the country’s population was living below the poverty line. Small pockets of protests emerged across the country, but the government was able to extinguish the flames of discontent by increasing civil servant wages by 34 percent.
The government wage bill was also revised to allocate 25 percent of all pay to public workers and food subsidies.
But this was simply a short-term solution to buy time for the government. “The regime has been good at coping with social anger and frustration until now by spending and buying social peace,” Dr. Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, an Algerian political analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center told TRT World.
“If the financial situation will not allow it anymore, repressive measures would be used if needed,” she added.
Political uncertainty
The country’s 80-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is now in his fourth term, was diagnosed with stomach cancer during his second term in office. He has hardly been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2014. The wheelchair-bound leader is said to communicate with his ministers via letters as he struggles to speak.
With the next presidential election not scheduled until 2019, there have been calls for early polls, but supporters of Bouteflika have denied rumours that the president is unable to rule. "The president is fine, the country is fine, the party is fine," the head of the country’s ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), Amar Saadani, said in 2016.
Even if the country goes on to elect a new president, there is currently no clear successor in the race to challenge Bouteflika’s rule. Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil has been tipped as the favourite to replace Bouteflika, but the US-educated technocrat may be disqualified from entering the presidential race due to the constitution barring candidates who have lived abroad for a long time or have married a foreigner.
Chakib Khelil's (left) return to Algeria from the US while the condition of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (right) remains a mystery has led people to believe that he may be planning to run for president. [Reuters]
Rival factions
Bouteflika himself was brought to power with the support of the DRS, the country’s intelligence agency, which had been led by Gen. Mohamed Mediène since 1990. But in 2015, Mediène was replaced after 25 years of service. The DRS was then disbanded and replaced by a new agency, the DSS, which reports directly to the president.
Later in 2015, Mediène’s deputy Gen. Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi was arrested and sentenced to five years for destroying official documents. The court did not permit Mediène to testify on his behalf. But Mediène called on the authorities to release Ait-Ouarabi, saying that his deputy was just carrying out his orders.
Furthermore, businessmen previously close to Bouteflika have been distanced, having fallen out of favour for oligarchs closely linked with the president’s brother Said.
This had led many to doubt whether Bouteflika is even in charge. Opposition leader Ali Benflis has alleged that Bouteflika’s ill-health has left a “vacancy of power” which has been seized by “extra-constitutional forces” from the president’s entourage.
Militancy
Having been in power for 18 years, Bouteflika has largely maintained peace and stability in the country, which is recovering from a crippling civil war that plagued it throughout much of the 1990s. But the country still isn’t free from militancy.
In January 2013, an Al Qaeda-linked group took hostages at a gas plant in In Amenas. Thirty-nine foreign workers and one Algerian were killed in the attack. Gas facilities in Algeria also came under an Al Qaeda rocket attack in March last year.
Al Qaeda militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar led the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in 2013. He was removed from the US State Department's Rewards for Justice list in January 2016, leading many to believe he has died.
After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, huge quantities of weapons were looted from the country and landed in the hands of armed groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria. Algeria has thus far kept such groups largely at bay, but the weakening of the Algerian government could give militants, who can easily mobilise through the country’s porous desert boundaries, more room to gain ground.
But years of fighting have made Algerians weary of falling back into conflict, making a delayed Arab Spring highly unlikely, according to Dr. Ghanem-Yazbeck. “Algerians are eager for change but not by violent means. They paid a hefty price in the 1990s and they do not want to sacrifice thousands of lives again,” she said.
Author: Ertan Karpazli
Source:
TRTWorld
Is Algeria heading for a late Arab Spring?
Algeria may have the right ingredients for a full-blown popular uprising, but the newly healed scars of the last civil war make Algerians think twice about revolting.
Algeria is already reeling from a revolution that took place in 1988, which was followed by a decade of civil war that killed thousands.
Algeria has been a rare phenomenon in that it was immune to the Arab Spring. Despite sharing similarities with its North African counterparts, Algeria remained relatively stable while a trend of sweeping rebellions toppled governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Why is it that when Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire out of protest in a suburb of Tunis in December 2010, sparking an explosion of pent up frustration across the Arab world, Algerians on the most part were unaffected?
Is Algeria really an exception in the Arab world, or is it heading towards the same fate as other North African countries?
Too many eggs in one basket
With around 40 million people, Algeria is the second most populous country in North Africa after Egypt. And despite its 1,600 kilometre-long coastline on the Mediterranean, it has not become a popular tourism destination, unlike its neighbours Morocco and and Tunisia.
Gas plants in rural parts of Algeria have face attacks from Al Qaeda militants, a further put off for international investors. [AFP]
Instead, the country depends heavily on natural gas exports for income. In fact, around 60 percent of the state budget comes from oil and gas exports, which account for about 97 percent of all exports from Algeria. The country is currently the third largest gas supplier to Europe after Russia and Norway.
But the dip in international oil and gas prices in recent years has sent the Algerian economy tumbling. Decreasing demand in Europe had already seen gas oil and exports to the continent decline since 2009.
Cash running out
Algeria has an increasingly disgruntled young population that suffers from high unemployment and poverty. In addition, the country is experiencing a major housing crisis, topped off with high consumer prices, low salaries and a widening gap between social classes.
The crisis has forced the government to delve deep into its foreign exchange reserves. “Total reserves have fallen from $194 billion in 2013 to an estimated $108 billion in 2016 and are projected to decline further to $60 billion in 2018,” a World Bank report states.
Algeria's central bank has warned that if this slide continues, the country’s foreign exchange reserves could diminish. Despite this, state-owned energy firm Sonatrach, which generates approximately 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, announced it would pump $90 billion into new projects by 2020 to encourage investment.
Rigid bureaucracy
But heavy regulations and high taxes make the Algerian energy sector an extremely difficult place for investors to make a profit. Laws stipulate that Sonatrach takes at least a 51 percent stake in oil and gas deals with international partners.
The Algerian government then taxes up to 90 percent of revenue made from such deals. Due to bureaucratic hurdles, it can also take up to 17 years for energy firms operating in Algeria to start the production process, around three times longer than the global average. Therefore, two recent energy bidding tenders failed to generate much interest.
A 2016 report on the impact of low oil prices on Algeria said that companies like Sonatrach need to “finance their investments” to return to the international market, but argues that it is “highly debatable that this would be financially feasible for Sonatrach.”
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the 80-year-old president of Algeria, has been wheelchair-bound and generally out of the public eye since suffering a stroke in 2014. [AFP]
No long-term plan
When the Arab Spring kicked off in 2011, around a quarter of the country’s population was living below the poverty line. Small pockets of protests emerged across the country, but the government was able to extinguish the flames of discontent by increasing civil servant wages by 34 percent.
The government wage bill was also revised to allocate 25 percent of all pay to public workers and food subsidies.
But this was simply a short-term solution to buy time for the government. “The regime has been good at coping with social anger and frustration until now by spending and buying social peace,” Dr. Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, an Algerian political analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center told TRT World.
“If the financial situation will not allow it anymore, repressive measures would be used if needed,” she added.
Political uncertainty
The country’s 80-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is now in his fourth term, was diagnosed with stomach cancer during his second term in office. He has hardly been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2014. The wheelchair-bound leader is said to communicate with his ministers via letters as he struggles to speak.
With the next presidential election not scheduled until 2019, there have been calls for early polls, but supporters of Bouteflika have denied rumours that the president is unable to rule. "The president is fine, the country is fine, the party is fine," the head of the country’s ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), Amar Saadani, said in 2016.
Even if the country goes on to elect a new president, there is currently no clear successor in the race to challenge Bouteflika’s rule. Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil has been tipped as the favourite to replace Bouteflika, but the US-educated technocrat may be disqualified from entering the presidential race due to the constitution barring candidates who have lived abroad for a long time or have married a foreigner.
Chakib Khelil's (left) return to Algeria from the US while the condition of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (right) remains a mystery has led people to believe that he may be planning to run for president. [Reuters]
Rival factions
Bouteflika himself was brought to power with the support of the DRS, the country’s intelligence agency, which had been led by Gen. Mohamed Mediène since 1990. But in 2015, Mediène was replaced after 25 years of service. The DRS was then disbanded and replaced by a new agency, the DSS, which reports directly to the president.
Later in 2015, Mediène’s deputy Gen. Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi was arrested and sentenced to five years for destroying official documents. The court did not permit Mediène to testify on his behalf. But Mediène called on the authorities to release Ait-Ouarabi, saying that his deputy was just carrying out his orders.
Furthermore, businessmen previously close to Bouteflika have been distanced, having fallen out of favour for oligarchs closely linked with the president’s brother Said.
This had led many to doubt whether Bouteflika is even in charge. Opposition leader Ali Benflis has alleged that Bouteflika’s ill-health has left a “vacancy of power” which has been seized by “extra-constitutional forces” from the president’s entourage.
Militancy
Having been in power for 18 years, Bouteflika has largely maintained peace and stability in the country, which is recovering from a crippling civil war that plagued it throughout much of the 1990s. But the country still isn’t free from militancy.
In January 2013, an Al Qaeda-linked group took hostages at a gas plant in In Amenas. Thirty-nine foreign workers and one Algerian were killed in the attack. Gas facilities in Algeria also came under an Al Qaeda rocket attack in March last year.
Al Qaeda militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar led the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in 2013. He was removed from the US State Department's Rewards for Justice list in January 2016, leading many to believe he has died.
After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, huge quantities of weapons were looted from the country and landed in the hands of armed groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria. Algeria has thus far kept such groups largely at bay, but the weakening of the Algerian government could give militants, who can easily mobilise through the country’s porous desert boundaries, more room to gain ground.
But years of fighting have made Algerians weary of falling back into conflict, making a delayed Arab Spring highly unlikely, according to Dr. Ghanem-Yazbeck. “Algerians are eager for change but not by violent means. They paid a hefty price in the 1990s and they do not want to sacrifice thousands of lives again,” she said.
Author: Ertan Karpazli
Source:
TRTWorld
Is Algeria heading for a late Arab Spring?
loyola llothta
☭☭☭
Is Algeria heading for a late Arab Spring?
Algeria may have the right ingredients for a full-blown popular uprising, but the newly healed scars of the last civil war make Algerians think twice about revolting.
Algeria is already reeling from a revolution that took place in 1988, which was followed by a decade of civil war that killed thousands.
Algeria has been a rare phenomenon in that it was immune to the Arab Spring. Despite sharing similarities with its North African counterparts, Algeria remained relatively stable while a trend of sweeping rebellions toppled governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Why is it that when Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire out of protest in a suburb of Tunis in December 2010, sparking an explosion of pent up frustration across the Arab world, Algerians on the most part were unaffected?
Is Algeria really an exception in the Arab world, or is it heading towards the same fate as other North African countries?
Too many eggs in one basket
With around 40 million people, Algeria is the second most populous country in North Africa after Egypt. And despite its 1,600 kilometre-long coastline on the Mediterranean, it has not become a popular tourism destination, unlike its neighbours Morocco and and Tunisia.
Gas plants in rural parts of Algeria have face attacks from Al Qaeda militants, a further put off for international investors. [AFP]
Instead, the country depends heavily on natural gas exports for income. In fact, around 60 percent of the state budget comes from oil and gas exports, which account for about 97 percent of all exports from Algeria. The country is currently the third largest gas supplier to Europe after Russia and Norway.
But the dip in international oil and gas prices in recent years has sent the Algerian economy tumbling. Decreasing demand in Europe had already seen gas oil and exports to the continent decline since 2009.
Cash running out
Algeria has an increasingly disgruntled young population that suffers from high unemployment and poverty. In addition, the country is experiencing a major housing crisis, topped off with high consumer prices, low salaries and a widening gap between social classes.
The crisis has forced the government to delve deep into its foreign exchange reserves. “Total reserves have fallen from $194 billion in 2013 to an estimated $108 billion in 2016 and are projected to decline further to $60 billion in 2018,” a World Bank report states.
Algeria's central bank has warned that if this slide continues, the country’s foreign exchange reserves could diminish. Despite this, state-owned energy firm Sonatrach, which generates approximately 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, announced it would pump $90 billion into new projects by 2020 to encourage investment.
Rigid bureaucracy
But heavy regulations and high taxes make the Algerian energy sector an extremely difficult place for investors to make a profit. Laws stipulate that Sonatrach takes at least a 51 percent stake in oil and gas deals with international partners.
The Algerian government then taxes up to 90 percent of revenue made from such deals. Due to bureaucratic hurdles, it can also take up to 17 years for energy firms operating in Algeria to start the production process, around three times longer than the global average. Therefore, two recent energy bidding tenders failed to generate much interest.
A 2016 report on the impact of low oil prices on Algeria said that companies like Sonatrach need to “finance their investments” to return to the international market, but argues that it is “highly debatable that this would be financially feasible for Sonatrach.”
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the 80-year-old president of Algeria, has been wheelchair-bound and generally out of the public eye since suffering a stroke in 2014. [AFP]
No long-term plan
When the Arab Spring kicked off in 2011, around a quarter of the country’s population was living below the poverty line. Small pockets of protests emerged across the country, but the government was able to extinguish the flames of discontent by increasing civil servant wages by 34 percent.
The government wage bill was also revised to allocate 25 percent of all pay to public workers and food subsidies.
But this was simply a short-term solution to buy time for the government. “The regime has been good at coping with social anger and frustration until now by spending and buying social peace,” Dr. Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, an Algerian political analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center told TRT World.
“If the financial situation will not allow it anymore, repressive measures would be used if needed,” she added.
Political uncertainty
The country’s 80-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is now in his fourth term, was diagnosed with stomach cancer during his second term in office. He has hardly been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2014. The wheelchair-bound leader is said to communicate with his ministers via letters as he struggles to speak.
With the next presidential election not scheduled until 2019, there have been calls for early polls, but supporters of Bouteflika have denied rumours that the president is unable to rule. "The president is fine, the country is fine, the party is fine," the head of the country’s ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), Amar Saadani, said in 2016.
Even if the country goes on to elect a new president, there is currently no clear successor in the race to challenge Bouteflika’s rule. Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil has been tipped as the favourite to replace Bouteflika, but the US-educated technocrat may be disqualified from entering the presidential race due to the constitution barring candidates who have lived abroad for a long time or have married a foreigner.
Chakib Khelil's (left) return to Algeria from the US while the condition of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (right) remains a mystery has led people to believe that he may be planning to run for president. [Reuters]
Rival factions
Bouteflika himself was brought to power with the support of the DRS, the country’s intelligence agency, which had been led by Gen. Mohamed Mediène since 1990. But in 2015, Mediène was replaced after 25 years of service. The DRS was then disbanded and replaced by a new agency, the DSS, which reports directly to the president.
Later in 2015, Mediène’s deputy Gen. Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi was arrested and sentenced to five years for destroying official documents. The court did not permit Mediène to testify on his behalf. But Mediène called on the authorities to release Ait-Ouarabi, saying that his deputy was just carrying out his orders.
Furthermore, businessmen previously close to Bouteflika have been distanced, having fallen out of favour for oligarchs closely linked with the president’s brother Said.
This had led many to doubt whether Bouteflika is even in charge. Opposition leader Ali Benflis has alleged that Bouteflika’s ill-health has left a “vacancy of power” which has been seized by “extra-constitutional forces” from the president’s entourage.
Militancy
Having been in power for 18 years, Bouteflika has largely maintained peace and stability in the country, which is recovering from a crippling civil war that plagued it throughout much of the 1990s. But the country still isn’t free from militancy.
In January 2013, an Al Qaeda-linked group took hostages at a gas plant in In Amenas. Thirty-nine foreign workers and one Algerian were killed in the attack. Gas facilities in Algeria also came under an Al Qaeda rocket attack in March last year.
Al Qaeda militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar led the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in 2013. He was removed from the US State Department's Rewards for Justice list in January 2016, leading many to believe he has died.
After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, huge quantities of weapons were looted from the country and landed in the hands of armed groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria. Algeria has thus far kept such groups largely at bay, but the weakening of the Algerian government could give militants, who can easily mobilise through the country’s porous desert boundaries, more room to gain ground.
But years of fighting have made Algerians weary of falling back into conflict, making a delayed Arab Spring highly unlikely, according to Dr. Ghanem-Yazbeck. “Algerians are eager for change but not by violent means. They paid a hefty price in the 1990s and they do not want to sacrifice thousands of lives again,” she said.
Author: Ertan Karpazli
Source:
TRTWorld
Is Algeria heading for a late Arab Spring?
Jesus... Western Africa DOE NOT NEED this. Libya's instability alone fukked up the region all the way to northern Nigeria.
shyts about to get real....
Military intervention looms as Jammeh clings to power
Military intervention looms as Jammeh clings to power
Military intervention looms as Jammeh clings to power
Military intervention looms as Jammeh clings to power