Algeria : a battle between Paris and Moscow for the wheat market

Algeria’s desire to diversify its wheat supply has led to competition between France and Russia. A strategy that involves risks, explains the analyst Sébastien Abis.

Neither Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune nor his country needed this. In the context of the current economic crisis and a tense political transition, Algeria has been shaken by a scandal involving the import of rotten wheat, a highly sensitive issue in terms of food security.

The story broke out in November 2020 with the discovery, in the port of Algiers, of 30,000tn of soft wheat from Lithuania declared unfit for consumption.

After the dismissal of Abderrahmane Bouchahda, the director general of the Office Algérien Interprofessionnel des Céréales (OAIC) – a public body that imports the wheat consumed in the country – President Tebboune ordered an investigation to be opened at the beginning of January and instructed the finance ministry to carry out an audit of the OAIC.

An issue taken very seriously

Even though it was a very small shipment – the country has imported about 8m tonnes of wheat a year over the past five years – the issue was taken very seriously. And for good reason: wheat, which is widely consumed in Algeria and subsidised to ensure that the price of processed products (flour, bread and pasta) remains affordable, is a strategic commodity.

Despite efforts to develop national production (around 4m tonnes per annum), Algeria must resort to importing on a massive scale to satisfy a consumption which is constantly growing (around 12m tonnes per annum).

Lack of transparency in the sector

As a result, the country is the world’s fifth-largest importer of cereals, surpassed on the continent only by Egypt, in first place. This good weighs heavily on Algeria’s budget, averaging around $3bn a year over the past 10 years.

Tags: wheat market, Russia, France