Algeria

Algeria (Listeni/ælˈdʒɪəriə/ or /ɔːl-/; Literary Arabic: الجزائر al-Jazāʼir; Algerian Arabic, Tamazight: Dzayer, ⴷⵣⴰⵢⴻⵔ; French: Algérie), officially People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is an Arab country in North Africa on the Mediterranean coast. Its capital and most populous city is Algiers. With a total area of 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), 90% of which is desert, Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, and the largest in Arab world and Africa (following the partition of Sudan) and on the Mediterranean.[10] The country is bordered in the northeast by Tunisia, in the east by Libya, in the west by Morocco, in the southwest by Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Mali, in the southeast by Niger, and in the north by the Mediterranean Sea.

The territory of today's Algeria was the home of many prehistoric cultures, including Aterian and Capsian and the Proto-Berber cultures. Its area has known many empires and dynasties, including ancient Numidians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Hammadids, Almoravids, Almohads, Ottomans and the French colonial empire. In recent decades, Algeria has experienced increased identity recognition demands, in response to which, Tamazight, the language of their 13,000 year old people, has been constitutionalized as a national language. Algeria is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1541 communes. With a population of 39.5 million, it is the 33rd most populated country on Earth. Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been the President of Algeria since 1999 and has won four consecutive elections.