Macron visits Algeria in a context of calm after months of controversy

French President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to the North African country includes a visit to the capital Algiers and the city of Oran, in the northwest of the country.

According to the Elysee, this visit should contribute to “deepen the bilateral relationship” and guide it “towards the future, for the benefit of the populations of both countries”.

The headquarters of the Presidency of the French Republic added that the president’s trip should also help “strengthen Franco-Algerian cooperation in the face of regional challenges and continue the work of appeasing memory.”

Accompanied by an imposing delegation of 90 people, the French president will first meet his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmajid Tebboune, twice in the capital, before traveling to the country’s second largest city, Oran.

The chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia, was going to be part of the delegation, something unprecedented in a visit of this type, but he canceled his participation, explaining that he had tested positive for Covid-19.

Macron’s visit coincides with the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and the proclamation of Algeria’s independence in 1962, but the French president said that, above all, he was determined to focus his trip on “youth and the future”.

On the part of Algeria, Macron’s visit has been greeted as the will to “give impetus to a new vision based on equal treatment and the balance of interests”, according to the official Algerian press services agency (APS).

Renew economic and financial associations

Macron’s first visit to Algeria as head of state dates back to December 2017 and this new trip aims to reinvigorate economic and trade agreements, promises that they have failed to keep since that first trip.

Thus, Macron will meet on Friday with young Algerian businessmen. Kamel Moula, industrialist at the head of the Council for Economic Renewal of Algeria, told the media outlet ‘TSA‘, which expects “a new mode of cooperation” between France and Algeria, based on “investment and co-production” for “a partnership in which everyone wins”.

In Algeria, France only has about 10% of the market share and is now supplanted by China, which has 16% and is the country’s leading supplier.

The geostrategic and regional importance of Algeria

In a context of post-Covid-19 recovery and in the midst of war on European soil, Algerian economic operators hope to make the most of the situation. In fact, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Algeria has become a highly sought after partner for European countries that want to reduce their dependence on Russian gas.

Algerian gas “is not really the subject of the visit” and there will be “no announcement of contracts or important negotiations,” says the Elysee, although the director of the energy giant Engie, Catherine MacGregor, is part of the delegation.

Macron and Tebboune will also talk about the situation in Mali, from which the French Army has just withdrawn, and the growing Russian influence in Africa. Algeria plays a central role in North Africa and the Sahel due to its thousands of kilometers of borders with Mali, Niger and Libya. It is also a close associate of Russia, its main arms supplier.

The choice of Macron to make this trip at the beginning of his second term also corresponds, according to Algiers, to “a recognition of the axial role of Algeria in the region” and a “return in force of Algerian diplomacy on the international scene”.

“Given the risk of instability in the Maghreb, the conflicts in the Sahel and the war in Ukraine, improving relations between France and Algeria is a political necessity,” Algerian political scientist Mansour Kedidir told the AFP news agency.

Algeria-France: stormy relations

Relations between the two countries experienced a serious cooling in September 2021, when Macron reproached the Algerian “political-military” system for maintaining a “memory rent” (against France) around the war of independence.

But it was above all his questioning of the existence of an Algerian nation before colonization that offended the Algerian people, from the government to the streets.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had denounced in the German weekly ‘Der Spiegel‘, in November 2021, some comments that further strained the relationship: “Mr. Macron has hurt the dignity of the Algerians, we were not a subhuman people (…) before the French arrived.”

The president made these remarks in Paris before 18 young people whose families had lived through the war in Algeria, before an article in the newspaper ‘Le Monde’ reported themthus triggering a bitter crisis that would last for months.

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Today, although the French president has expressed his regret, Algerian public opinion has not completely turned the page because, if it has been able to accept the reference to the “political-military system”, the questioning of the existence of the Algerian nation has severely hurt it. .

Macron’s statements had shocked even more because many Algerians still remembered his words spoken on February 15, 2017 in Algiers, when he was a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic: colonization is “a crime against humanity”.

“It is a real outrage. And it is part of this past that we must face, asking for forgiveness from those against whom we have committed these acts,” Macron said then. These words had caused such a stir in France that the president, without denying them, never risked repeating them.

Thus, at the end of 2021, the crisis between the two countries was at its worst in the last 15 years. Algiers withdrew its ambassador and banned French planes from flying over its airspace to supply forces participating in Operation Barkhane in Mali.

Another recurring theme of tension between the two countries is the issue of visas. In September 2021, Paris decided to reduce by 50% the number of visas granted to Algerians, as well as to Moroccans and Tunisians, to put pressure on their governments, considered uncooperative – according to the French Government – in the readmission of their nationals. expelled from France.

The Elysee revealed that both countries want to move forward on this issue and highlighted that since March 2022, the Algerian authorities have issued “300 passes (for the return of their nationals), compared to 17 in the same period in 2021 and 91 in 2020 “.

In this way, in recent months, there has been a truce: the Algerian ambassador has returned to his post in Paris and the skies of the North African country are once again open for French military aircraft that are on rotation in the Sahel.

The Algerian president congratulated President Macron on his re-election and both heads of state resumed their telephone conversations.

But these episodes of alternating crises, tensions and calms illustrate the volatility of the relationship between Algeria and its former colonizer. A complex relationship marked by memories that remain difficult to reconcile after 132 years of colonization, a traumatic war whose scars have been passed down from generation to generation.

This history and current events between the two countries lead many observers to question whether the last calm after the storm will last.

With AFP and local media