In Algeria, a newspaper providing news only in Tamazight, a Berber dialect added to national languages in 2016, will soon be available. This was disclosed on October 22 by Si Hachemi Assad, secretary general of the High Commission for Amazighity (HCA), on a public radio station.

According to him, the project has already been elaborated and is ready to be launched in partnership with the ministry of communication and the State which will finance the media. “The newspaper will rely on a State funding similar to the one that APS (Algérie Presse Service) benefits from. It will cover politics, culture and sport news having a national character. The creation of this daily newspaper perfectly aligns with the State’s objective related to the Tamazight issue,” said Hachemi Assad. 

Still, showing concerns for the effective concretization of this project would be more than justified looking at how economic challenges have significantly hurt activities of local written press in Algeria, over the past months. 

Servan Ahougnon