 Hello, everyone. Welcome to this event. It's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to this event from the Algerian economy, discussing the lessons from the past, the current dynamics, and the implications for the future. Hi, my name is Emile de Dewey. I'm a lecturer here at SOAS on the political economy of development, and I'll have the pleasure to chair and moderate this event, which is hosted by the SOAS Middle East Institute and in partnership with the Institute for Social Science Research on Algeria, which is an integrated institute by Tiananmen among the public. I think most of you would know the largest country in Africa and the Arab world. Yes, there aren't many events on Algerian, especially not on the Algerian economy, which is why, and as shown by the high number of registrations in the first days in which the event was promoted, there's a lot of appetite for the platform, for the challenges, dynamics, and processes of the Algerian economy. So I really hope that this is the first of many in this field, and you'll be welcome to join the other events on Algeria. Today is also a very particular date. It's the anniversary of the Algerian Revolution, so it's no surprise that this event is taking place on the same day. The Algerian Revolution was seen as a means to achieve political independence, but economic development was also perceived as a means to achieve economic independence on the long term. And this makes this event particularly relevant on this day. So still largely dependent on the export of fossil fuels. The Algerian economy is today at the crossroads, as you know, but what can be learned from the country's past history and past attempts at achieving economic development and diversifying the economy. Our drivers were also hurdles to promote entrepreneurship, industrialization, digitalization and innovation in Algeria. These important questions will be addressed today in this final that brings together leading Algerian economists with complementary expertise on those different issues, and they're therefore best suited to answer some of these questions. But this will also be a discussion and we'll get to also, you know, hear from you and I know people like Professor Ben-Busien who happened to be London today. So it's great news for us and that will enrich the discussion. So let me start by introducing our speakers today, starting with the one that we have in person, Tim Pinen, who is a political economy researcher. She's the co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Social Science Research on Algeria and an associate fellow at the MENA program at Chatham House. She's currently writing her PhD thesis at the London School of Economics. We also used to be, so we were colleagues, looking at China's digital silk road in North Africa. Her research in interest includes information, communication and technology, ICT, knowledge economy and China's presence in Africa and the Middle East. Before starting her PhD, Tim Pinen was part of a research team working on questions relating to North-South knowledge production and data-driven innovations at the LSE. She holds a MSc in Development Studies from the LSE and the BA in Politics from SOAS, University of London, where we are. The second speaker is an economist currently a re-senior fellow at the University of Marburg in Germany and a research associate at Economics, a research unit of the CNRS and the University of Paris-Norbert. From 1995 to 2002 she was a researcher at the CNRS, but before that she was a lecturer at the University of Oran in Algeria. Her publication record focuses on the transformation of the Algerian economy, institutional change, industrial and monetary policies and gender economics. Third, Professor Tayyip Hafsi is a professor at HSE Montreal, the Business School of the University of Montreal. His research and teaching focuses on various topics related to business policy, business management of complex organizations. He's written more than 120 academic articles and has authored about 45 books or monographs. He's been awarded several prizes, which are too many to list today, but just to cite a few, the François-Albert Andrews Best Teaching Book Award and the Cooper's Library Best Business Book Award. He holds a Master's of Science in Management from the Sloan School of Management in the MIT and a Doctorate in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. Last but not least, Mabrouk Aheb, who I like to call a Renaissance man because although his bio lists him as a highly experienced manager, I would add that he's also an experienced lecturer, policy advisor and entrepreneur. You'll see what I'm talking about once he starts his presentation. He founded, he co-founded the startup in the precision agricultural business that is developing solutions for smart irrigation and integrated resource management for farmers, including in Algeria. He's also a co-founder of Polagal SVA, the company specialized in agricultural logistics and services. He holds a engineering degree, he's also an engineer in strategic management from the Ecole Nationale Polytechnique and executive training programs from the Harvard Business School and the University of Oxford. So, and so he'll be able to talk about all startup ecosystems, learning from an academic perspective, but from his own experience. So a little bit of housekeeping before you start, before you start this event and then you'll have enough hearing from me. So this is a hybrid event that takes place both online and on campus. A live translation is provided for those of us joining us online, so you just click on the button at the bottom and you can translate again here the French or Arabic translation. The event is recorded, but not the Q&A, so you can just speak freely and we can have a discussion, nothing is recorded. We'll have about 90 minutes, each panelist has about 12 to 15 minutes to present, so I'll let you know when you have about five minutes left. And then we'll open for Q&A and discuss the presentations or any questions that you might have. So on that note, let's start with the presentation by Professor Tayyip Hafsi, if you can share your slides. Thank you very much. Good evening everyone. You should be able to share your slides soon. I will do that. Can you see my slides? Yeah, super. If you can put them in full screen. Sure, I'll do that. Okay, thank you Amir for inviting me to this great gathering. I'm very pleased to share the floor with this great panel, Fetihat in Hinen and Mobruk. My presentation is really a tale of how the economy is being built from the bottom up. And I want to tell you about the research that we did and about the results that we got out of this research. The work inspiration, of course, comes from people who have been working on entrepreneurs like Schumpeter and Kirsner. Also, perhaps very important, the work by Alfred D. Chandler, a business historian at Harvard who died last year, I think. In particular, his book, The Visible Hand, Chandler was arguing that the economy is not built by the invisible hand of the market, but is built by the visible hand of managers and entrepreneurs. And of course, the market is very important. It's necessary, but not sufficient. And so the question that we ask is with the Algerian, perhaps the migrant economy be built by its entrepreneurs. Perhaps to tell you about where I start from, give you an idea of how I, the assessment I make of Algeria. Few things, anomy, inability, inability to build large systems of cooperation. Outside influence, in particular in Algeria, colonization, effects are still present and probably will be for a long time. And with that, of course, I include not only physical, but also mental and intellectual influence. Aspiration to liberty, of course, because of the long struggle for liberty that lasted more than several centuries, I should say, leads to resistance, which is interesting, leads to resistance to organizational constraints. High level of education and dissatisfaction, turbulent youth, and of course turbulent, but also a source of high energy. In my belief of bubbling desire to create and a lot of initiative source, of course, of entrepreneurial behavior. And all this elements, if you will call for a micro look, and perhaps bottom up built up of theory and practical knowledge. Just to let you know, I'm thinking of entrepreneurs in all areas, okay, economic public administration and so on and so forth. So the questions are, as I said, we're interested in whether the entrepreneurs are building the economy, but actually we have biases we want to see we wanted to see if they build also their communities if they build values and institutions if they're building a new societal model. Perhaps a word also about institutions in the new institutional theory, institutions, if I want to simplify are three are three types, if you will one is laws and regulations. Second are norms of behavior. And third is the mental schema I mean what we get out of education and culture. Of course institutions mean stability. And when we talk about change, that means we are in situations of trouble. And also trouble is the opportunity in some in some cases. And so the question is whether in the troubles that I was describing about Algeria, if the entrepreneurs actually building both economy, the economy and the institutions. And of course we believe that this is a very important topic for at least academia. In Algeria, we tried of course to study firms that we are in dynamic firms firms that are succeeding but also dynamic public sector organizations. So we had to identify the candidates get access build the cases, and then of course build, build theory. So again, we, you can see the question are always the same that that are coming back. Just to give you an idea of some of the studies that we conducted. We have about 20 cases that we that we have been working on. Just to give you an idea is had a rub rub is the builder or has been the builder of the largest private conglomerate in the larger private company as well. Muhammad Mazzoni is is one of the pioneers in building Sonatrak Sonatrak, which is the oil company in Algeria. The Ben Amor family is the one I'm going to be talking about and telling you more about it. Hania Zazwa and Nassim Bambarek. These are examples of a very micro company, people who have been trying to sell artifacts, small artifacts that are also art pieces. And so it's really a micro company. And then finally, Dr. Nooh, which is, which has been the builder of a foundation in the region of Ardaya in the center south of Algeria. And who has been with Amidul has been the the builder of new city that has received a lot of awards as being the typical ecological town, if you will. And they have received a lot of international awards. Okay, I want to tell you to this is the main point I want to tell you about the Ben Amor case. Ben Amor is is was a very small family. Okay, that was involved in small food markets. And they realized that that tomato or at least tomato products that they sold were very important and and the demand for those products was was very important in Algeria but also in France when they when they settled earlier. So, of course, as you know, tomato is the basis of the couscous sauce and widely used if you will in Algerian cuisine. In 1970s it was mostly imported in concentrated source source gas. So they decided to build a plant to make tomato from imports, but also from the local production of tomato. Of course the demand for the Ben Amor products was really very important. But soon when they wanted to grow they, they found that there were limits and the limits were supply limits they couldn't find tomatoes on the on the on the market. When they went to see the growers the growers told them that there was no possibility to increase production. Tomato production was a challenge. No water, poor technology, and also that was the situation was was really dire that at the time since peasants were abandoning agriculture. So the Ben Amor couldn't believe that so they started looking into solutions into that so they hired the leading figure in agriculture in Algeria, a meditant farmer and agronomist or so. And they were looking for experience in Europe, in particular in Spain. So they, they brought technology, both in water use and tomato farming. They built experiments with farmers. This is a small private company. They convinced skeptical farmers they guaranteed income from experiments. They provided also the seeds, baby plants, if you will. And so they, they convinced the farmers and so to make the story short, against all odds in the area where the government has been trying for more than 30 years to do things without success. They succeeded in transforming the region which is the, the region in the southeast of Algeria, Gelma to transform the region from brown and bear to green red and blooming. Farmers became more enthusiastic and their hairs went back to farming. The Ben Amor production went from 3,000 ton to 60,000 tons and of course they became the market leader imports were not needed anymore. Ben Amor convinced the government to get involved in government was impressed by how this small company has been able to to transform a whole region actually in agriculture and transforming practices in agriculture. Starting new patterns of cooperation with the between the government and the private sector. Of course, you cannot succeed in everything Ben Amor was also involved in couscous producing couscous if you will then they tried to replicate the same success in in the wheat products and of course it was no it didn't, it didn't succeed. So that simply tells you that the how hard it may be to to do things in in that environment. We have some lessons and conceptualization. Lessons are many I'm just pulling some for for your benefit. First the dominant values that we see in not only Ben Amor but also in those companies that have succeeded excellence and ambition this companies have values of drive to be excellent and professional drive to be among the best. Belonging ethics respects most of these companies were honest. They they they promoted honesty compassion altruism. They were self confident. And of course self confidence was based in this particular case in most of the cases on religion and spirit spirituality equity exemplarity proximity sense of responsibility to society and community. So they're just to give you to give you how they are how coherent they coherent they were in practice. They emphasize universal excellent certification of all products and processes training of personnel. Most of these companies had actually internal schools. They emphasized people consulting with them proximity with the with their with their own employees listening to their own employees being close and approachable. In the discussion I could tell you more about that if you wish. They emphasized community. They built actually community structure the communities in which they were. And of course they tried to remain invisible not being seen especially by by the government. The conclusion is, it is probably likely that when we look at the situation of Algeria which is a troubled society. It is likely that entrepreneurs and managers are the key to building a vibrant economy and perhaps even a healthy society. So I'm going to stop there and come back with the discussion. Thank you for this quite insightful presentation. Now, let's continue with with Fatih on the theme of industrialization before we bring in the perspectives on digitalization innovation and with my brook. I'll now share. Fatih has slides here. And Fatih had the floor is yours just tell me when to. I think we lost. Actually, I did get started out this maybe if you don't mind going for it and then we'll bring Fatih later. Thank you. You think it's easy to do like this on this place? Is it more difficult? This is just the screen. This is the right color. I'm not really. I don't know why I'm just coming. So you can just screen share directly from the screen. So. Well, hi everyone. I was expecting to start presenting a bit later but technical issues. I'm very happy to be here. Very happy to be back at SOAS. I'm a SOAS alumina myself always happy to be back here, especially on such an important occasion. So as I mentioned, this is the 68th anniversary of the glorious Algerian Revolution. And this year marks the 60th anniversary of our independence. I was asked by Amir to talk to you about Algeria's digital economy and the ICT sector. And I wasn't sure what to tell you, to be honest. And because the title of this big event was about, you know, Algeria's economy, its past, its present and its future, I thought that I would just try to characterize the ICT sector in Algeria kind of tracing the main evolution of the ICT sector and kind of focusing on the major political and economic changes in the country since independence in 1962. While doing this, I will focus on the weight of ideologies and politics in shaping the main ICT policies of the country. So I divided the timeline in four major periods, as you can see. And they're all separated by critical junctures that I will explain. It might be evident for Algerianists in the room and not like not evident at all for non Algerianists in the room. Feel free to challenge this. This is not part of my PhD. As Amir mentioned, I mainly work on China's digital investments in Africa. This is just like lots of intellectual curiosity and like a conjunctural presentation for today. So I'm going to start with the first period, 1962, 1986, building a computer in defiance of their resource costs. So this period of history is actually not that well studied. It's very significant. So there were huge efforts made by the Algerian state to try and diversify the economy. And that was part of the whole ideology at the time is like strong socialist ideas dominating the top of the Algerian regime. And the ambition was to, you know, create a diversified technologically advanced economy. So huge investments at rapid industrialization, lots of investments in investing in human capital education. So at the time in 1962, 85% of the Algerian population cannot read and cannot write. Right. So like huge challenge. And so the Boumedian regime, starting from 1965, realized the importance of ICT. And we had ICTs that started being used both within civilians and within the military. So, Algeria adopted its first ICT plan in 1968, quite early for a developing nation. And that was because it was cockying Francis on digital policies and ICT policies, the ambitions were big. So Algeria was literally following a, you know, a major technological leader. So in 1966, France had adopted Le Plan Calcul, the Calcul plan, and that was Charles de Gaulle's attempt to kind of achieve more technological independence from the US. And Algeria adopted, similarly, an ambitious plan to also achieve technological independence. And just a year later, it created the series in 1969. So the series is the Sankt d'études de recherche en informatique, so the Center for Studies and Research on Computer Science, which later became the prestigious EZ, Ecole Nationale Supérieure en Informatique. And at the time, so already in the late 60s, Algeria was training high-quality ICT engineers. It was also manufacturing computer computers at that time. This is quite significant. So in the 70s, there was the production of Mitra, 125 that you have here. And it also integrated SIM, so like high levels of value addition at the time. It also had some moderns, like this one that you can see here, that, you know, had a capacity of 30 to 960 megabytes per second. So not your best options if you want to stream a Netflix movie, but it was still quite something at the time, right? So there was this clear ambition at diversifying and industrializing. And this was created by Sydney, which was like the Commissariat Nationale en Informatique. There was also a lot of software development at the time, and actually Algeria was meeting software writing in Arabic. And at the time, when Microsoft wanted to develop software in Arabic, it was thanks to the help of an Algerian engineer at the time, called Bashir Halimi. So this was obviously the product of a strong ideological commitment to achieve full independence. So not just territorial independence, but also technological and economic independence. And that was the spirit of November, like the spirit of the revolution, right? Yeah, I think it's important because many writings that came after this space, especially with the rise of neoliberal policies later on, kind of minimized the impact of this period. You know, it's always Algeria's economy has always been bad. And obviously, like, it did not end up being a huge success, but there are lessons to learn from this space. And this part of history is hugely understudied. I'm just going to move to the next thing. Okay. So the next phase would be the much less exciting phase of 1986-1999. And just as you may know, in 1986, there was a major drop in oil prices, which drove the country in significant economic and political turmoil. So in the 1990s, the so-called dark decade started, and some call it the Civil War. In 1994, Algeria had to undertake structural adjustment. And obviously at the time, the priority was no longer in making computers, but really in saving the state and like saving the walls. You had, at this time, also the rise of neoliberal ideologies. So there was quite a significant ideational shift away from the early phase of development, which was about, you know, state interventionism, having a big state industrial policies, import substitution policies at the time, towards kind of the dominance of the idea that, you know, technological progress is best achieved with market efficiency. So each country should focus on its comparative advantage, right? And by trading with other countries, we can all produce maximum wealth. So Algeria should not, according to this theory, focus on making computers, but it should focus on its natural comparative advantage, which is in oil and gas, right? So this is what the ideology at the time, or the doctrine at the time said, was very much promoted by the World Bank and the IMF and kind of imposed through structural adjustment programs. So at the time, yeah, Algeria kind of stopped its ambitious industrial policy and was sent back to its natural position in the global economy, you know, at the bottom of the global economy just producing oil and gas. Obviously, there's a huge problem with this theory. Comparative advantage is obviously constructed. Like, you know, if today Japan has an advantage in SIM productions, it was very much constructed through industrial policies. So it's not something that we should just take for granted. And there are many issues, obviously. We know that just exporting natural resources ends up with life. Either there's unfavorable terms of trade for exporting goods with low value addition. And so the country was trapped here. There was no vision for industrial policy and there was a huge brain drain. So all of the IT engineers I mentioned that were trained in the 70s and 80s. So, many of them left the country during the 1990s. Right. So there was an important kind of brain drain taking place at the time. I'm moving to the next phase. 1999, 2019. So I was thinking making this presentation. The cool thing with autocratic states is that sometimes you just have two decades and it's one person. So you can just like analytically kind of just makes it easier. There are huge variations in this, like two decades of what's a figure in power. But yeah, so during this period, as you may know, there were high levels of clienteleism and little commitment to economic diversification. Export rates during this period average 95% hydrocarbons. So, you know, I became this typical country affected by the resource curse like in this phase we could see all the symptoms of the Dutch disease and the resources. There was natural global evolution. So there was like a catch up in terms of internet usage between 2005 and 2019 so in 2005 internet usage was around 5%. And by 2019 was just around like 60%. So that's slightly above board average at that point. This phase is not characterized by a specific economic doctrine or ideology. There was a lot of ideological opportunities. So one would prefer first arrived in power. That's in the late 90s, the price of oil was very low, right. And, like, I think it averaged 20, 30 dollars a barrel. And so at the time, there was a big push to liberalize the telecom sector. You know, there's a need for other sources of capital for foreign capital. Mainly, and this is when Jay-Z came in 2002 and then Najma 2004 these are large mobile carriers in the country. And then there was a second phase when like oil prices starting going up, and then the ideology change and we saw more state intervention is more kind of like assertiveness, especially in the highly strategic ICT sector. So there was a nationalization of Jay-Z during the sparse of the state nationalized it. And there was a lot of political control over the internet. Fun fact, Algeria was in its GDP group, one of the last countries in the world to roll out 3G. Because as you may know, in 2011, there was the Arab Spring, and people were using the internet to organize protests and to mobilize people. And so the government decided willingly to delay the rollout of 3G. So we're one of the last countries that got 3G. That was in December 2013. That was a lot of like catch up in terms of like infrastructure at this time. But it also came with like high level corruption standards, right? So like, especially with Chinese companies actually visiting and far away were in charge of like building the backbone infrastructure at the time. So when the headache came in 2019, Algerians were overwhelmingly using the internet. The mainly using social media. These are like 2021 numbers of Algerian usage of social media. So we had about 24 million Algerians using Facebook, 6 million using Instagram, and others. This is like the gender division of it. Obviously, like in the rest of the region, male use the internet more than women. It's actually one of the regions of the world, the Middle East and North Africa with the biggest gender gap in internet usage. So economically, well, there was internet usage, but you know, it's been utilization of the internet. So internet was used but with very low value addition. So it's mainly to serve the net or like go on social media. There's still a huge problem in kind of having more value addition in using the internet and digital technologies more broadly. The last period. So after the Iraq. So now, so there's much fun part about ICTs, but little ICT development, if you're a follower of Algerian news, like I am. You would realize that the word startup is used pretty much all the time. It's kind of like the only economic plan the regime has. But there is little realization of what it would take to have a dynamic and competitive startup ecosystem. Recently in August, there was the announcement that the government would create a fund for startups, and it's in doubt with 400 million US dollars. That's quite significant. Thanks to the Ukraine invention. Now prices are up again and so we can have like this kind of big investments again. But, you know, it comes without a clear digital industrial policy or clear vision of how this money will be used and so without a clear kind of listing of the main strategic sectors where this money should be invested. There is the risk of just depleting the money without resulting in any significant technological upgrading. When we look at indicators currently Algeria ranks quite fully. So a government development index just like 130 out of 193 countries. Next work readiness index, Algeria ranks 102 out of 139 countries, and like in the government artificial intelligence readiness index, we're 118 out of 172. So you get the picture like it's not it's still like an oil dependent economy. It's not very competitive and innovative. And this is what Kermadeon Murphy would actually call thin integration. So now in Algeria, we do have access to the internet and the big cities, those huge improvement in the quality of broadband access. The usage of it remains not developmental basically. So it's that there is a lack of local content creation, a lack of local applications developed a lack of local platforms and like local digital services, basically. And there is no real strategy at the moment to really help develop more local content. There's also a problem when it comes to data sovereignty, the bulk of the country's digital data is stored outside in data centers abroad. And this creates both political and economic issues right, we know that data is economically valuable. However, at the moment, Algerian firms are not involved in processing this data and extracting economic value from it. And that's a major issue. So yeah, like at the moment I think it's legitimate to ask the question of, you know, there is the debate of moving to 5G. But this network, this upgraded network infrastructure is very expensive. And we're not at the moment utilizing 4G at its full potential is hugely underutilized. But it needs to be a reflection on like, do we really need to spend millions if not billions of dollars, kind of shifting to 5G, while 4G is not utilized to its full potential at the moment. So there is a need to think about strategic digital industrial policies and thinking, maybe I will just conclude on that. I'm thinking about what the November spirit would mean in the digital sector today. So by November spirit, I mean a bunch of 20 years old, who decided one day that they will kick out the third biggest military power at that time, and and actually had nothing but their determination. So what would this be today? What would be the November spirit in the digital sector? It's an open question, maybe more local content creation in Darija for the millions of Algerians who don't speak classical Arabic and French, maybe more data localization, data sovereignty, very important in the age of the knowledge economy. And yeah, just thinking about how to achieve technological independence for the future. I'm going to stop here. Thank you. Thank you to Nina. And what a nice way to link the general solution with the digital, digital revolution in the context of IST development. Are you ready to start your presentation. I think you're still muted. Okay. Yeah, we can hear you. Share your slides. Yeah. Share screen. It's okay. Can you see the slides? No. No. No, if you cannot share them, I can share them here and you just tell me when to go with the. Okay. The floor is yours. Okay. Thank you. So my topic is on the industrial fuel in Algeria, the burden of history and institutions. So the first other slide is I presented the main periods of this history and events and they are from 63 to 85. So self-centered development model. Industrialization was part of a will to break with the capitalist economy, both externally with the state monopoly on foreign trade and at the level of the domestic economy, the dominant public economic sector. And from 86 to 88, the system went into crisis and the industrial sector was heated. The centralized planning of the economy, which had been the dominant mode of regulation, was called into question. Economic reforms was aimed at setting up the institutions of a market economy in 89, 91. And then structural adjustment programs from 84 to 88, 94 to 98. And then the period from 2001, 2006 after structural adjustment and the rising of hydrocarbon prices and greater stability, the economy regained its main financial balances. But non hydrocarbon growth remains sluggish and industry continues to decline. A new industrial strategy was put in place in February 2007. And from 2009 to 2022, we see a return to close control of the state on the end of the administration on the economy. The other slide. Can you put this? Yes. Industry in the Algerian development model is theoretically founded on first lesson from a certain lecture of the history of economic development in a teleological lecture of the development of Europe in the 18th and 19th century. It is also based on structuralist theories of dependence and equal exchange, exportation of the periphery by the center. We have to break with the past and accelerate the development. Industry is the basis of this strategy and technology plays a central role. It's believed that industrial development requires large scale enterprises and modern technologies. The central role of the state as an agent of change and modernization is more important is thinking as more important than that, which it has historically played in Europe, because it is justified by the weakness, the so called weakness or absence of social forces that bring about modernity. The model differs from the balanced growth theory of Ragnar-Nerx, and also it differs from the model of industrialization through the promotion of exports, which are the basis of the success of the emerging countries, but it differs also from import substitution, which gives priority to consumer goods and the domestic market. The theory of industrialization is industrializing industries of the Bernese. The Bernese follows the tradition from Hirschman theory of unbalanced development, Francois Perrault, and also the Soviet model. In this model, the steel industry is the hardcore of the industries that provide development. And agriculture doesn't play an important role. In the contrary, it's opposed to the Soviet model and the Marxist model. But in the Algerian model, there is a missing element is the capital goods industry, because both in the Bernese theory and also in the Soviet model, the capital goods industry plays a central role in the reproduction of the whole productive system. Since Marxism as of reproduction, this sector has been at the heart of industrialization strategies and at introversion. However, these are not found in the Algerian model. They are included in the basic industry and their role is not distinguished from that of construction, material or steel. And apart from investments for agriculture and construction, there is no program for the production of capital goods for industry, which means that imports are relied upon in the long term. It can be assumed that given the steady nature of the model, investment in the sector has been implicitly deferred to a later program. However, this missing link in the Algerian industrial strategy cast doubt on the declared will to build a totally autonomous industrial system. Despite the boldness of the announced objectives, it seems that the planner originally set limits to the model, in a way internalizing the fatality of underdevelopment that forbids pushing to the end the ambition of industrial development in its self-centered form. The Algerian industrialization doctrine, it has been elaborated by two different states, the Tripoli program in 1962. Then we have a period of gestation till the 65 where the report on the presentation of the 66 capital budget outlines a long-term strategy of 15 years, the National Charter in 76. So the model is based on the Lebanese industries, but unlike this model and like the Soviet one, there is no absolute priority of one branch over another. The debates around industrialization, it's important to see that there are recurrent debates throughout this period about the role of industry, technology, the state, the private sector, and different social forces in development. Two currents are proposed financials and industrialists, they emphasize on the importance of the financial balances and industrialists are putting the accent on the size of investments and the volume of production. Debates also about the mode of regulation of the economy, centralized planning, the US regulatory market, ex-empty, exposed. But the run theories in the 80s and the 90s inverted the representation of North-South flows, instead of the center exploiting the periphery through an equal exchange, the oil rent considered as an external income is accused of annihilating production and hamper development. So there is an inversion of the vision of the cause, the reasons of and their development. The center periphery opposition was undermined by the rise of the newly industrialized countries, the imagine country then by the fall of the Berlin Wall it was replaced by the vision of a multipolar world in which the level of development depends largely on successful integration into the world economy. So next, the implementation of this strategy. Sorry to cut you, but just to see that you are, we have quite a few slides, about five minutes left. So I don't know if you want to talk about the new industrial policy from 2017 onwards or... Yeah, so you can change the plans, you can change. No, what are you going to say? If you want. But it's important to say that this strategy has been... We can't... You know, the implementation of this strategy, we can compare it with the objectives. You went to the new industrial policies, so you went very far. Or maybe if you... So the new industrial policy of 2007, it was a strategy for industrial recovery and development. It was defined as an import substitution policy in an open economy. And it was both a continuation of the previous policy described as an import substitution in an administered economy and at the same time a break with it in so far as it takes note of the opening of the economy. The objectives are to increase the share of industry in the gross domestic product to contribute to the diversification of exports and of the economy and to the increase of the contribution of industry to job creation. It relies on the major sector, petrochemical, phosphate, steel and non-ferrous metal and is supposed to be implemented with integrated industrial development zones, clusters and also with public-private partnership and also the role of the private sector. Okay. You can change. But this strategy failed. First, it was never officially adopted. No decision was taken on the means to be used for the implementation and no assessment was made. One of the main reasons was the blocking of the banking and financial reform and the respective policy of credits to the economy, especially for the private sector. Wounded by the failure of the industrialist policies of the 70s and 80s, the state no longer wanted to commit itself directly to an industrial project. The fear of a sudden elastic drop in oil revenues and awareness that these revenues will eventually run out. So they gave the priority to the stability of macro-financial balances not to increase budgetary expenditures in an irreversive manner. Infrastructure investments should only represent one-off expenditure allowing monetary services to be absorbed and jobs to be created. They target a sector relatively protected from competition which would not have been the case for industry with the plan opening of the domestic market with the Euro, Mediterranean Free Trade area and the prospect of joining the VTBO. Can you change, please? Next time. Okay. And the global financial crisis, Algeria was little affected by the crisis thanks to its foreign exchange reserves and its low level of integration into global finance. But it was one of the countries who took immediately protectionist measures and tightened administrative controls on its economy. So dictated by the priority given to macro-financial stability in the context of exposure to inflationary shocks, these measures had the most immediate effect of writing the situation of block projective investment by reinforcing the conditions of the financial system and increasing the constraints on the firms, on companies. So at the beginning, this policy led to a dead end because the more surpluses accumulate, the more they parallel the economy and excessive precautions can have catastrophic consequences. At the beginning of 2011, faced with the counter-productive nature of the measure taken to curb the rise of imports in the context of rising oil prices but above all to defuse the protests encouraged by the river movement by setting the entire Arab world. The authorities once again allowed spending and imports to run away. How do you have about one minute to conclude? You can change. And the 2009 supplementary financial law, it's the coming back of the administration and state controlled over the economy. You can change. Maybe, yes, about the new growth model of industrial recovery is, no, off. So you have about one minute left. Yeah. And now the last one is this new growth model for industrial recovery. It aims at the structural transformation and diversification of the economy in prioritized sectors. And you can change. We see now that there is an Algeria de-industrialization model. For about three decades, Algeria has been undergoing a process of de-industrialization. In 2016, non-hydrocarbon industry accounted for only 5% of GDP. It was 35% in the late 1980s. Although it was never very important as industrialization was more capital intensive than labor intensive, the share of industry employment in total employment peaked at 18% in 1970 and is steadily declining to the benefits of services, which in 2015 accounted for over 61% of total employment. And also the share of employment in agriculture declined most dramatically. Productive gains are faster in services than in industry. This phenomenon of de-industrialization, is it simply an expression of the failure of the industrialization strategy in its project to achieve economic takeoff? Or is it a shumpeterian process of creative destruction, which is beneficial for the obsolete components of this industry, as it encouraged a dynamic of adaptation to the rapid changes in the national and global economy? The explanation is also with the disease. So the first interpretation insist on the importance of the existence of an ex-anti-strategy that overhangs and guides industrialization. And why not denying the existence of a strategy minimizes its impact as such and sees it rather as the result of contradictory factors and forces. And in conclusion, we can show the figures because it's the illustration of de-industrialization. That's going to be a few words. Yeah, yeah, and to conclude, I will conclude with the question of the coloniality of institutions. My idea is that you can go to the conclusion, please. My idea is that the reforms undertaken in Algeria in the 1990 have not been successful. It is because the nature of the transition was mistaken. It has been thought that it was a transition from a socialist economy to a market economy and the transition model elaborated by the international economic and financial institutions was applied, whereas the deep roots of this economy and its institutions are colonial. So one of the challenges for me is to seriously address the colonial legacy, its persistence, and its imprint on the institutions. In covering and analyzing them, it is not a matter of developing an anti-colonial ideological discourse, but of contributing to the knowledge of this economy and its institutions. I consider the question in terms of path dependency as understood by institutionalist theory. The question is, what are we dependent on? What is the history of these institutions still? What in the history of these institutions still determines them today? By questioning the coloniality of institutions, I do not presume to exhaust the question, but rather to complement other approaches more focused in particular on the conflicts of power that ran through the national movement and the constriction of the post-colonial state. And thank you. Thank you very much. In the comment board, you have a few requests to access your slides as it was quite rich and we didn't have time to go through it all, but hopefully we'll make it accessible if you want to read more. And now last but not least, a brook to talk about startups innovation and drawing on both his academic and professional experience. My brook, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Amir, for this opportunity and happy celebration to all my Algerian fellow citizens. Can you see my screen? Not yet. My brook, you have both the luxury and the curse of being the last presenters because your word is definitely the same time if you can be brief so we can have time for discussion, it would be fantastic. Yeah, definitely. I will try to make it short so we have time for the Q&A and the discussion. So I'm going to give you an overview of the ecosystem and maybe share my talk about what are the challenges and the perspective around the startups in Algeria. So in the ecosystem, first let's talk about the ministry of startups and knowledge economy which was created in 2020 and led by a young and let's say, a young minister and also a former start-up so it's quite interesting and he has a young and very dynamic team so it's quite, it's important to mention it because it's so different with regard to all the other ministries and central administration. Algeria's start-up fund is the state-owned fund I will talk about it later on. Algeria Adventure is the accelerator it's a public accelerator I think it's the only one in Algeria there's no other accelerator for start-up in Algeria. There's a couple of incubators private incubators like Incubi, SyLabs, Linecubator, Tech2Hub to name a few that very dynamic as well and they are also start-upers actually because they are young entrepreneurs trying to help other start-upers. Business Angels there's a few business angels to my knowledge there's only CASBA Business Angels which is a structured club of business angels there are some individual business angels and family offices but the maturity in Algeria is very low. The start-up level to have the possibility to access to fund from the Algeria start-up fund you need to have this level it's a certification there are some requirements like the age of the company it should be a small business it should be innovative and it has to have a scalable business model interestingly to get this level all the process is digitalized so it's quite an exception in our environment and then if you are granted this level you will have some benefits like tax exemptions you have access to funding as I said and also acceleration with Aventure the public accelerators I wanted to show you these figures they come from the Ministry of Start-ups as you can see so there is an exponential growth of the number of start-ups and this year as far as I know there are like 2,000 start-ups so I think there are two take-aways from this slide first the growth of start-up creation is exponential it's a good news but it tells us that there are very few start-ups in Algeria like 2,000 imagine or assume that 10% of them will be successful we will have only 200 also start-ups so when we hear that the start-ups will help the economy to grow there is a lot to do the start-up fund I think today is the only option for start-upers to be funded now they have quite an interesting amount of money to fund the start-ups up to 1 million per project of course you have to be to have the certification level the team will assess your business model and financial plan but the process is quite straightforward there are a couple of challenges with this only option that today the start-upers have in Algeria first is the valuation because they will not give a valuation based on the opportunity size or the entrepreneur's intrinsic qualities it's a patrimonial approach so they will definitely value the start-up at a very low level there is kind of control because it's a public fund so they need to to protect themselves and it has a direct impact on the management of the start-up well in reality there is not really an impact but on paper there is a kind of a steering committee associated with the management of the start-up so it could be constrained but in reality it's not the case they just leave the management to the start-upers and they exit I will talk about it later in the Q&A if someone wants to have more information about it what are the challenges today for start-upers first of all the global environment doing business in Algeria as you may know the bankruptcy, the banking system the foreign currency control in particular it's very difficult for a start-up based in Algeria to have an international market and even in Algeria because of the lack of online payment system it's quite difficult to grow market inside it's always difficult to have information about any market info is usually not up-to-date or available and on top of that we have specific challenges for the start-up so for under-training we need I've named some incubators and accelerators but we need much more and much more professional in this to help funders to be able to manage and grow their business funding, financing talk about this specifically for start-up there's only one option as mentioned the legal status and last but not least the brain drain it's very difficult today to get and to keep talented people because most of the young educated people live the country and the second one is even the start-upers themselves they are very good start-upers that are leaving the country to build their start-up outside the country for example those are brilliant guys they started in Algeria and they are extremely promising start-up but now they are no more in Algeria perspectives we have young and talented people they are really open to the world so there is a huge potential for the start-up to grow there's an interesting dynamic launched by the minister and his team and all the ecosystem around there is a need for diversification of the economy so the government is really trying to support the start-ups as a solution for the diversification but there's also some challenges regarding the government policy although they are trying to use those start-ups to fight against the employment of youth but we are let's avoid the on-stage the on-stage on-stage was a fun to help young people to develop business and at the end it was a collapse another challenge is the vision of the government I had the opportunity to discuss with different ministers and executives in the central administration and there's like a motto that they have to substitute imports by producing locally and they have the same mindset with the start-up I'm not sure it's a good idea start-ups should be able to export and not being a solution for import substitution and another challenge is this global vision and the coordination that is lacking actually so there are many initiatives within the government but not always coordinated and it's difficult for the business people to understand where we are going so this is it thank you and I would be glad to answer your question thank you for a very comprehensive presentation on the start-up ecosystem and landscape in Algeria