Algeria: decision about the devaluation of the dinar and new restrictions on demonstration to increase protests

Algeria is a country located in the North of Africa and the largest of the whole African continent, with a territory of more than two million km2. Predominantly Muslim, the majority of its population lives in the North, along the coastal areas near the Mediterranean Sea, given its Southern extension is part of the Sahara Desert. 

The current President of the Algerian Republic is Abdelmadjid Tebbourne, after succeeding Bouteflika at the end of 2019, who had been in power for nearly twenty years. However, social unrest has been on the rise, with the Hirak as its main protagonist. The latter was born as a movement that aimed at rejecting Bouteflika’s candidacy for a fifth mandate for the 2019 elections and demanded a change in Algerian’s political system, which dates back to the independence of the country in 1962. However, the movement continues to demand for that political change and keeps protesting against corruption and nepotism.

Since the country decided to devaluate its coin, the dinar, the population has been struck by the consequences of the pandemic and the fall in oil prices, resulting in a severe impact. Last December, the Cercle d’Action et de Réflexion sur l’Entreprise (CARE) noted that, over the last 10 years, the Algerian currency had already fallen in value by 77%. As a result, there is a serious shortage of certain products, an erosion of Algerians purchase power, rising unemployment and inflation that have affected the most socially vulnerable.

All of this comes at a time when protests in the country are on the rise, with many workers going on strike (including firefighters, education workers or more recently health workers). All of which are being repressed by government forces, with latest announcement by the interior’s ministry of more restriction and bans against protests that have not been previously authorized.

Therefore, according to many, the progressive devaluation of the dinar along with these new restriction on protests and increasing popular unrest, are likely to increase the level of the already massive protests throughout the North African country.