Algeria
- Capital:
- Algiers
- Continent:
- Africa
- Region(s):
- Northern Africa
- Abbreviation:
- DZA
* As of 1/8/2026
1 birth
Every 37.9 seconds
1 death
Every 2.3 minutes
1 emigrant
Every 18.2 minutes
1 person
Every 54.6 seconds
156K
250K
500K
750K
1M
2.5M
Algeria was inhabited by several prehistoric people, including the Caspian culture, and many empires and dynasties have ruled the region over its history, such as the Romans, Byzantines and the Turkish Ottomans. At the beginning of the 20th century, Algeria had 4 million people.
Today, Algeria is inhabited mostly by Arab-Berber people, with 90% of the population living in the coastal area of the north with the people in the Sahara desert concentrated in oases. There are about 1.5 million remaining nomadic and semi-nomadic people in the country. Algeria is a young country, with 1 in 4 people under the age of 15. Interestingly, women play an important role here, making up 70% of Algeria’s lawyers and 60% of its university students.
Arab-Berber (99%)
European (1%)
The main religion in Algeria is Muslim (official; predominantly Sunni).
Muslim (official; predominantly Sunni)
Other (includes Christian, Jewish)
97% of the Algerian population is Muslim. There aren’t really any other religions with a significant population. The second most popular religion is Christianity with a meager 285,000 followers.
About 96,000 refugees and asylum seekers are living in Algeria, most of whom are from Western Sahara. There are also about 35,000 Chinese migrant workers and up to 165,000 Sahrawis from Western Sahara in refugee camps. Between 600,000 to 2 million Algerian Turks live in Algeria, and they are today known as Kouloughlis.
The largest concentration of Algerians outside of the country are in France, with more than 1.7 million Algerians. Algeria is the second-largest French-speaking country in the world in terms of the number of speakers. An estimated 11 million Algerians read and write in French.
The French colonized Algeria during the mid-1800s and around 50,000 emmigrated there during that time. By the 1900s, Europeans accounted for 20% of the population. The French were eventually ousted in 1945 during a war than killed at least 700,000 Algerians.
The Algerians experienced a civil war from 1991-2002 that killed roughly 100,000.