Despite President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s high-profile announcements, Algeria’s food security strategy remains plagued by structural imbalances, centralised governance and headline-driven initiatives with limited long-term impact.
However, closer examination of the government’s repeated display of ambitious figures, reveals that the policies promoted by President Tebboune in areas such as food security, water management and housing fall short of delivering a cohesive, inclusive development model.
The three “won challenges” highlighted by the administration are largely based on quantitative goals, rather than on strategic, long-term planning.
The initiatives such as the construction of grain silos, promotion of Saharan agriculture across 400,000 hectares and strong rhetoric positioning “food as a strategic weapon” may appear bold on the surface.
However, there are unfolding within a deeply vulnerable agricultural sector, characterised by low productivity, a heavy dependence on cereal imports (over 70% of wheat needs), and the absence of a meaningful agricultural investment policy.
The government’s recurring use of public procurement to artificially boost grain reserves fails to mask the sector’s production shortfalls, caused by poor mechanization, inadequate farmer training, and underdeveloped logistics infrastructure.
Saharan agriculture, widely touted as a silver bullet, remains largely experimental and marginal.
Official discourse overlooks the environmental costs, including the overexploitation of fossil aquifers and the accelerated desertification of arid regions. No independent audit has confirmed the actual impact or viability of investments in these zones.
Algeria currently claims to operate 19 seawater desalination plants, with a combined daily capacity of 3.7 million cubic meters, expected to reach 5.5 million m³/day by 2030. Yet this strategy faces three major limitations: high energy costs, in a country heavily reliant on hydrocarbons to power these facilities; an outdated and insufficient distribution network, limiting the delivery of desalinated water to end users and a lack of transparency regarding tender processes and maintenance, several plants are reportedly malfunctioning or operating below capacity.
Equally concerning is the absence of a demand-side water management policy. Rampant domestic waste, network leakages (estimated at nearly 40% of water produced), inefficient irrigation and the lack of incentive-based pricing mechanisms all undermine the long-term sustainability of water resources. The government’s fixation on desalination appears to reflect a broader failure to reform Algeria’s water governance model.
MK/ac/lb/gik/APA