Art Moves Africa – Retracing Roots and Tracing New Routes: Mobility and Touring in North Africa

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Country-Specific Information
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GENERAL INFORMATION
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Algeria is the largest country in Africa and shares
a border with all the countries of North Africa,
with the exception of Egypt. To its North lies the
Mediterranean Sea, while the Sahara desert covers
a wide swathe of the South of the country.
Algeria’s first peoples are the Amazighen.
Ancient Algeria was occupied consecutively by
the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and the Romans
before the Arab invasions of the 8th – 11th
centuries AD. The Ottoman Empire occupied
coastal Algeria between 1518 and 1830. In 1830,
France annexed Algeria, beginning a lengthy and
violent process of colonization. Algeria was administered
as a département of France between
1848 and Independence in 1962. The latter was
won through a complex and brutal war, with
torture and massacres deployed by the French
against the Algerian resistance. Over the years
of colonial presence, the French implemented
a thorough acculturation policy. Resistance to
this policy has defined the foundations of modern-day
Algerian identity: Islamic, Arabic and
Amazigh (Boukrouh and Kessab, 2010). Today,
French has no official status but is widely spoken
and used in government, media and educational
institutions, a legacy of Algeria’s colonial history.
Affiliation to Africa was enshrined in the
constitution of 1963, a reflection of Algeria’s
commitment to and centrality within decolonization
movements across the continent. Dubbed
the “Mecca of revolution” by Amilcar Cabral,
Algiers was a place of meeting for African resistance
leaders and political exiles in the 1960s
and 1970s. The Pan-African festival of 1969
was held in Algiers, and the city was a seat for
essential intellectual and political movements
such as pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism and the
non-Aligned movement.
Algeria’s connections with the continent
have been marred by its recent history
of authoritarianism and conflict. In the 1990s,
Algeria was engulfed in what is typically called
la décennie noire (the black decade), a period
of violence and terrorism opposing the Algerian
government and various Islamist rebel groups.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected in 1999 and
remained in power until his resignation on April
2, 2019. Diplomatic or economic relations with
the African continent have not been a priority for
the Algerian government, although there have
been gestures toward investment in Africa in
recent years.
While widespread protests did erupt in
Algeria in 2011, full-scale revolution did not take
place. However, on February 22, 2019, hundreds
of thousands of Algerians took to the streets in
what was described as a spontaneous wave
of contestation in response to Bouteflika announcing
his candidacy for a 5th consecutive
mandate. Demonstrations have continued since
Bouteflika’s resignation, as Algerians call for the
ruling elite to step down and gather around the
ideals of social justice, equitable distribution of
wealth, dignity, popular sovereignty, egalitarian
republicanism, anti-imperialism and principled
politics, among others (Rouabah, 2019). This
massive swell of popular dissent is underway at
the time of writing, with magnificent displays of
solidarity, hope, humour and imagination radiating
from Algerian streets to the world.
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ARTS AND CULTURE SECTOR
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Algeria’s cultural sector has been marked by
strong centralization and monopolization of
cultural affairs by the Ministry of Culture. The
Ministry has enjoyed a considerable budget, with
the windfall from oil and gas revenue making it
possible fo the Ministry’s budget to swell to $314
million in 2014, the largest in Africa (Kessab,
2015). This budget is reported to have collapsed
in recent years with the fall of oil and gas prices
and liquidation of Algeria’s reserves.
Administration of the Ministry of Culture’s
budget has been characterized by tight regulation,
opaque financing, poor management, clientelism
and a strong emphasis on funding for major
institutions and large-scale cultural activities
such as festivals. These in turn have promoted
a vision of Algerian culture that can broadly be
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