Algeria

Population:

Algeria is made up of 48 provinces and more than 1,500 communes with a 2015 population estimated at 40,633,000[1], making it the 33rd most populous country. It is also the 10th largest country and the largest country in Africa. Ninety-one percent of the Algerian population lives along the Mediterranean coast on 12% of the country's total land mass.

Forty-five percent of the population is urban, and urbanization continues, despite government efforts to discourage migration to the cities. Currently, 24,182,736 Algerians live in urban areas, and about 1.5 million nomads live in the Saharan area.

Culture:

The major part of the population is classified ethnically as Arab-Berber[2] as it represents more than 90% of the population and 96% religiously as Sunni Muslim, the few non-Sunni Muslims are mainly Ibadis 1.3% from the M'Zab valley. A mostly foreign Roman Catholic community also about Christians especially Protestant evangelic and almost 500 Jewish, most of them live in Bejaia. The Jewish community of Algeria, which once constituted 2% of the total population, has substantially decreased due to emigration, mostly to France and Israel.
Even if modern Standard Arabic is the official language[3], most of the people speak Algerian Dziriya (Darja) which is the language used by the majority of the population. Colloquial Algerian Arabic is heavily infused with borrowings from French and Berber.

Political Situation:

Politics of Algeria takes place in a framework of a constitutional presidential republic, whereby the President of Algeria ishead of state while the Prime Minister of Algeria is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the People's National Assembly and the Council of the Nation. A legacy of Algeria's bloody War of Independence from France (where an estimated one million Muslims were killed) is a powerful military and security apparatus that put a high value on secrecy.[4]Since 1988, parties other than the ruling FLN have been allowed and multiparty elections have been held, but freedom of political speech, protest and assembly is circumscribed and the 2014 presidential election was boycotted by major opposition parties.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been in power since 1999 and gained his fourth term of office in elections in 2014, despite doing no personal campaigning and rarely appearing in public after having suffered a stroke in 2013. He first took office when Algeria was still caught up in a savage civil war with Islamist insurgents, and is credited with curbing the conflict and restoring economic stability. He amended the constitution in 2008 to remove the two-term limit on the presidency, effectively giving himself the option of remaining head of state for life. Mr Bouteflika took 82% of the vote, but turnout was reported to be 52%, down from 75% in 2009. A coalition of Islamist and secular opposition parties had called for a boycott, describing the election as a sham and saying Mr Bouteflika was unfit to run because of his health problems. Three other presidential candidates pulled out of the race soon after his candidacy was announced, saying the result would be a foregone conclusion.[5]

Macroeconomic Situation:

On the economic front, Algeria’s fundamentals have steadily worsened since mid-2014, in line with the slump in global oil prices, but the recent budget approved signal a turning point. In 2015, growth slowed to 2.9 percent from 3.8 percent in 2014, hit by a falling average oil price from US$100 p.b. in 2014 to US$59 p.b. in 2015. Under initial expectations that the fall in oil prices would be short-lived, lack of fiscal consolidation led the budget deficit to double to -15.9 percent of GDP in 2015. The current account deficit also tripled to -15.2 percent of GDP in 2015. Despite tight monetary policy, inflation rose to 4.8 percent as the partial result of pass-through effect from about a 20 percent nominal depreciation of the dinar, aimed to correct the external imbalance. Unemployment rose to double digits and is acute among women and youth.[6]

[1] World Population Prospects - Global demographic estimates and projections by the United Nations
[2] http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Y-DNA_J/default.aspx
[3] "Présentation de l'Algérie". French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. 23 October 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
[4] Kaplan, Robert D. (2007). Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and ... Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 180. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
[5] BBC News, Algeria profile - leaders, May 2016
[6] Source: WorldBank

World Economic Forum's Indicators for Algeria in 2015