Algerian youth look to Tebboune’s re-election with hope and scepticism

Tebboune came to power after youth-led pro-democracy protests by the Hirak party ousted his long-time predecessor Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019.

But the movement has waned, and many of its followers are disillusioned.

“The last five years have brought nothing new,” Abdenour Benkherouf, a 20-year-old hairdresser strolling through downtown Algiers with a friend, told AFP.

“We haven’t seen anything good since 2019, when we won the Africa Cup of Nations,” he added with a grin.

His friend Karim Beldjoudi, wearing a FC Barcelona football shirt, agreed.

“We live today as we did then,” he said, referring to 2019, the year Tebboune was elected in a largely boycotted election.

“Five years have just passed, one after the other,” said Beldjoudi, who is unemployed.

Today, about a third of Algeria's 24 million registered voters are under 30 years old. But as in 2019, when 60 percent of voters abstained, a record high, the majority are unlikely to vote.

There are no official figures on voter abstention among young people in Algeria, where about 23 million people are under the age of 30.

This poses a challenge for Tebboune, who ran for president five years ago despite a record 60 percent abstention rate.

At a rally in Oran last month, he promised to create 450,000 jobs and increase monthly unemployment benefits if re-elected.

Unemployment benefits, introduced in 2022, are currently 13,000 dinars ($97) for people between the ages of 19 and 40. Tebboune has promised to raise that amount to 20,000 dinars, which would be the same as the current minimum wage.

22-year-old artist Fouad Brahimi said this was not enough.

“We need employment opportunities because these subsidies are not sustainable,” he said.

Although Algeria's economy has grown by around four percent annually over the past two years, the country is still heavily dependent on oil and gas to finance its social welfare programs.

“It is true that Tebboune has put in the work, but he is also continuing a project left behind by his predecessors,” added Brahimi.

Tebboune described Bouteflika's rule as a “decade of the mafia” in which wealth was concentrated in the hands of a “gang”.

Today, Algeria is Africa's largest gas exporter and third-largest economy. Tebboune said his time in office helped achieve this despite “a war against Covid-19 and corruption.”

Standing next to a campaign poster of Tebboune, 21-year-old Chadli Isshak said the president “has not been able to fulfill all his promises” due to the pandemic.

“He has created jobs and reduced Algeria’s debt,” the student said.

“But two or three years were not enough for him to do everything he wanted to do,” he added.

“We will see whether he can keep his promises in his second term.”

Sami Rahmani, 39, said he was satisfied with the president's record despite being unemployed.

“He has worked hard and I would like him to do even more in the next five years,” he said. “He should focus on helping the marginalized youth. We have people with degrees but no jobs.”

Every year, thousands of graduates settle for jobs that do not match their degree and work in precarious and sometimes informal jobs, such as street vendors.

Rahmani said his support for Tebboune made him a “traitor to the Hirak” in the eyes of others.

The movement faltered with the outbreak of the pandemic, coupled with increased police presence and a crackdown on protesters that resulted in hundreds of arrests.

Faced with disillusionment, many young Algerians have left the country – either officially on student or other visas or on makeshift boats in the hope of reaching Europe via the Mediterranean.

Benkherouf and Beldjoudi, friends interviewed by AFP in the city centre, said most people their age “today have the same dream: Harga”, referring to irregular migration.

str-bur/fka/bou/dcp