2,317 km of road, 2,548 km of fiber, a gas pipeline launched — and 83 km that are blocking everything

Dihia Aït Ali — Tamanrasset, Algérie — 2026-09-11

Note on method. Every figure in this investigation carries its source and its year. We worked from Algerian official documents (Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Hydrocarbons, Entreprise portuaire de Djen Djen — the Djen Djen port company, Serport), documents from African and international institutions (African Development Bank, UNCTAD, CLRT, World Bank, Comtrade), and Moroccan official documents (Tanger Med Port Authority, Ministry of Equipment). We set aside every figure that rested on a single uncorroborated source. When two official sources contradict each other, we give both. When we did not find something, we write “not published.” This investigation does not seek to flatter: it seeks to be unassailable.

🌍 What Algeria Has Actually Built

We have to start there, because it is the fact that nobody disputes and that few people know.

Algeria has built, on its own soil, the three networks that lead to the heart of Africa. A paved road of more than 2,300 kilometers to the Nigerien border. A fiber optic backbone of more than 2,500 kilometers along the same axis. And a trans-Saharan gas pipeline whose construction has begun on Algerian soil.

These are not announcements. These are structures. And that is precisely why the rest of this investigation matters so much: when you have built that, the only thing that can still ruin everything is failing to finish the connection.

🛣️ 1. The Road: 2,317 Kilometers, Completed

The Trans-Saharan corridor — the Trans-Sahara Highway of international organizations, RN1 for Algerians — links Algiers to Lagos.

The decisive fact, and it is dated: the Tamanrasset – In Guezzam section was completed in July 2009. Algeria therefore finished its share seventeen years ago. This is not a project, nor a promise, nor a plan: it is a road that exists and that people drive on.

What others have done, by contrast, is very uneven:

The cost, for Algeria, is documented: $2.6 billion committed on its section since the launch of the project (Ould Mohammedi, 2026). The multinational project financed by the African Development Bank for Algeria, Niger and Chad amounts to $585.53 million, of which $184.79 million provided by the Bank — or 31.56% (AfDB board of directors, December 11, 2013).

🔌 2. Fiber Optics: 2,548 Kilometers Laid to the Border

Along the same axis, under the same road, runs the trans-Saharan fiber optic backbone. Here too, Algeria has done its share.

And the neighbors are moving ahead: 1,031 kilometers of fiber in Niger, provisional acceptance on November 14, 2025, for €43 million financed by the African Development Bank. 503 to 559 kilometers in Chad depending on the source, for €79 million, of which €29 million provided by the European Union.

An honesty caveat, and it matters: there is no official figure for the total length or the total cost of this backbone. What is read everywhere — “4,500 kilometers,” “$4.5 billion” — mixes different projects: “4,500 km” is the length of the paved road, not of the fiber, and the $4.5 billion figure corresponds to a project sheet at the pre-feasibility stage, while the program's official platform shows $58 million for the same project. We will therefore publish no total. The only figures we give here are those measured, country by country, by those who lay the cables.

🔥 3. The Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline: Construction Has Begun

This is the most recent information, and it went almost unnoticed.

On June 3, 2026, in Adrar, work on the Algerian section of the trans-Saharan gas pipeline was officially launched. The announcement was made by Mohamed Arkab, Minister of State, Minister of Hydrocarbons, at the end of the fifth ministerial meeting of the project's steering committee, in Algiers, in the presence of his Nigerian and Nigerien counterparts and the heads of Sonatrach, NNPC and Sonidep.

The intergovernmental agreement had been signed in Abuja on July 3, 2009. Commissioning was then planned for 2015. We are in 2026: that makes eleven years of delay, and only the Algerian section is under construction. It has to be said, because it is accurate — and because it is the best way to explain why this pipeline, if it is completed, will redraw the continent's energy map.

On cost, we will write no figure. The amounts circulating — 10, 13, 25 billion dollars — come from no official statement. The Anadolu agency writes in black and white that “the cost of this project has not been disclosed so far by those concerned.” We will not invent it on their behalf.

🚢 4. Djen Djen: The Port That Must Become the Gateway to the Sahel

This is where precision matters most, because this is where the official narrative and reality part ways — and because it is by saying it ourselves that we close the door on those who would want to reproach us for it.

What the port actually does (source: the operator, Entreprise portuaire de Djen Djen):

The port of Djen Djen went backward in 2025. Eleven percent fewer ships, fourteen percent less gross tonnage, and tonnage almost identical to that of 2024 — that is, below that of 2023. The 2025 detail is unambiguous: 7,633,695 tonnes unloaded and 1,812,622 tonnes loaded, down 15%.

Containers at Djen Djen are counted in tonnes, not in boxes. The operator publishes 828,464 tonnes of containers unloaded and 171,615 tonnes loaded in 2025. No TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) series is published. Anyone who writes “Djen Djen handles X million containers” is manufacturing a figure: we will not do it.

The announced capacity is in the future tense, and it is the operator itself that says so:

“The container terminal, currently in its final completion phase, will offer a capacity of 2 million TEU per year.”

An announced capacity is not achieved traffic. And the expansion much talked about — 26 million tonnes and 5 million TEU — was announced by the Minister of Public Works on December 14, 2024. As of September 11, 2026, the studies are not finished: a consortium led by the Italian firm Modimar is still working, with maneuvering trials on a simulator at the maritime studies center in Genoa. No worksite is open, no delivery schedule is published.

As for the terminal itself, it has seen five postponements since 2017, the latest of which, in December 2025, recorded the failure of the deadline without setting a new one.

And here is the missing link, the one that explains all the rest:

A port with no road behind it is not a port: it is a quay. That is why we ask that these 83 kilometers be the absolute priority — before any new capacity announcement, before any new terminal. A port whose hinterland is 350 kilometers away will never be the gateway to the Sahel, whatever the length of its quays.

📊 5. What Real Traffic Says — the Figure Nobody Cites

We could have written a triumphal article. We could have repeated the “613,716 vehicles per day” that is read everywhere about the Trans-Saharan corridor. That figure is false, and we will explain why.

That total actually adds up the peri-urban traffic of Algiers (125,000 vehicles per day) and the urban traffic of Lagos–Ibadan (69,544 vehicles per day) with the Saharan sections. It measures the traffic around the two capitals, not the crossing of the desert.

The real figures, those of the official 2019 census by the Trans-Saharan Road Liaison Committee, reproduced by UNCTAD, are these:

The corridor lives on its local traffic, not on transit. Saying so does not weaken us: it arms us. Because the day a Moroccan colleague wants to attack us on this ground, he will have nothing left to teach us — we will have written it before him.

The closest numerical substitute, and the most embarrassing, is the trade declared in 2024 (UN Comtrade database):

These amounts are small. We publish them anyway, because it is the starting point, and because a country that claims to be opening a gateway must look at the counter before describing the gateway. You do not build an African policy on roads alone: you build it on contracts, customs and tariffs.

⚖️ 6. Facing Morocco: What Is True, What Is False

We are not among those who deny the successes of others. Here are the facts, on both sides.

What Morocco has achieved, and it must be acknowledged: Tanger Med is the leading container port of the Mediterranean and Africa, 17th worldwide, and the only African port in the top 30. Its growth since 2019 is the strongest of the world's top thirty ports. That is a real success, built in twenty years, with method.

And here is what that does not change: Morocco has no land border with Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso or Chad. None. To reach those countries by road, it must go through Mauritania, through a single border post. Algeria, for its part, borders Niger along more than 900 kilometers of frontier, and its road reaches it. That is what the gateway to Africa means. Not a quay: a border.

A detail that says a great deal: Moroccan exports to Mali were suspended on May 2, 2026 for security reasons (Hespress, English edition). A corridor that closes for insecurity is not a corridor.

⚠️ 7. The Three Errors in Circulation — and Why They Must Stop Being Repeated

We flag them because they harm us: repeated by well-meaning Algerian journalists, they hand our adversaries a free argument.

First error: RN3 does not go to Niger. National road 3 stops at Djanet, on the Libyan border. It never reaches Niger, which lies about 1,000 kilometers to the west. And the corridor sometimes seen on rough maps — “Djen Djen – Illizi – Djanet – Nigerien border” — does not exist. The only paved, classified axis leading to Niger is RN1.

Second error: the “613,716 vehicles per day.” We have just demonstrated it: that figure measures the traffic around Algiers and Lagos, not Saharan transit. Publishing it is to make yourself refutable in a single check.

Third error: presenting a capacity as traffic. “Djen Djen, 2 million containers” is read everywhere. It is an announced capacity, in the future tense, at a terminal not yet handed over, and no TEU figure is published by the operator. Writing that is to hand the opposite demonstration to anyone who wants to contradict us.

🎯 8. What Must Be Done — and What We Are Asking For

This investigation is not an indictment. It is an assessment, and it ends with five precise demands. We address them to whom it may concern, without detour and without insult, because France is not at issue here: the only adversary is time lost.

First, finish the Djen Djen connection. 83 kilometers between Djen Djen and El Eulma. Twelve years for 27 kilometers is the real scandal in this file — more serious than the terminal's delays, because it is the road that makes the port useful.

Second, sign real port agreements with the landlocked countries. On April 21, 2026, at the Algerian-Chadian Grand Mixed Commission, 27 agreements were signed — and none of them concerns access to the port of Djen Djen. The Minister of Foreign Affairs did speak of a “commercial gateway for the countries of the Sahel and the Sahara.” But a statement is not an agreement. We ask for tariff conventions, dedicated customs corridors, single windows.

Third, publish the figures for the In Guezzam / Assamaka border post. There is no published data on crossings at this border. How do you steer a corridor whose traffic you do not measure?

Fourth, speed up the rail. Of the 2,039 kilometers of the Algiers–Tamanrasset project, only 338 kilometers are in service — Algiers–Blida and Boughezoul–Laghouat, inaugurated on October 29, 2023. It is a real beginning, and it is financed: the African Development Bank committed €747.32 million in December 2025 and then $878.09 million in July 2026, and the MCDF fund granted a $630,000 subsidy in June 2026 to launch the Laghouat–Ghardaïa–El Meniaa corridor, with potential co-financing of $3.2 billion. The money is there. The worksites must follow.

Fifth, stop announcing capacities and start publishing traffic. A country that publishes its real figures becomes unassailable. A country that publishes its ambitions becomes vulnerable. That is the lesson of this entire investigation.

[[CHART]]

Fiber optic toward the south | 2 548 | 0 | km

Paved road to the Nigerien border | 2 335 | 0 | km

National section of the trans-Saharan gas pipeline | 2 310 | 0 | km

[[/CHART]]

Look at this chart. On these three networks — fiber, road, gas — Morocco has no equivalent. This is not an opinion: it is the absence of any comparable project in the Moroccan official documents, whereas Algeria has laid 2,548 kilometers of fiber, 2,335 kilometers of asphalt and launched work on a 4,128-kilometer gas pipeline.

🏛️ Decision-makers: The Six Decisions Our Correspondents Ask You to Take

This investigation is not an opinion. It comes from the ground: our correspondent writes from Tamanrasset, 450 kilometers from the Nigerien border, on a road she travels and whose condition she sees.

We are not asking to be listened to. We are asking for decisions. Here are the six decisions, ranked by rising cost. The first three cost nothing more than a signature or a publication.

A word on method, and it commits us. We excluded from this investigation the figures that flattered us: the “613,716 vehicles per day” and the fiber's “$4.5 billion.” We apply to our own work the standard we bring before you. If we allowed ourselves a false figure, you would have the right to stop reading us.

The timeline, now. These six decisions do not have the same urgency. The first three can be taken before the end of the year. The next three require a budget, therefore an arbitration. What we ask is that the country stop building quays and announcements, and that it connect. A door without a handle is not a door.

🎯 The Conclusion: a Door Is Finished with a Handle

A country can build the most beautiful door in the world. If no one can open it, it is only a wall.

Algeria has built the door. The road is there, the fiber is there, the pipeline is starting up. What is missing is neither money, nor concrete, nor courage: it is the signatures, the counter clerks, the tariffs and the 83 kilometers that link the quay to the highway.

We write this investigation from Tamanrasset, 2,000 kilometers from Algiers and 450 kilometers from the Nigerien border. From here, things are simple: the road exists, it is beautiful, and it leads nowhere as long as the rest is not finished.

Algerians must not be asked to believe in Africa. They must be given the means to get there. That is not the same thing, and it is the whole difference between a speech and a policy.

📚 All the Sources — So That Everyone Can Check

We do not ask anyone to believe us.

Trans-Saharan road — Trans-Saharan Road Liaison Committee (CLRT), 77th session, Algiers, June 8-9, 2026, cited by Radio algérienne; UNCTAD, The Trans-Saharan Road Corridor, 2022, pages 39 to 47; Algerian Ministry of Public Works and Basic Infrastructure (S. Rabehi, June 11, 2026); African Development Bank, board of directors press release of December 11, 2013; Nigerien Ministry of Transport (2025); UN Comtrade database for 2024 trade.

Fiber optics — Algerian Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (2026); Radio algérienne, November 5, 2019; Algérie Télécom (2019); African Development Bank, press release of November 21, 2025 for Niger; AfDB and Tchadinfos documents for Chad.

Trans-Saharan gas pipeline — statement by Mohamed Arkab, Minister of State, Minister of Hydrocarbons, June 3, 2026, Algiers, carried by Radio algérienne; Abuja intergovernmental agreement of July 3, 2009; capacity data from the Algerian Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Enerdata.

Port of Djen Djen — Entreprise portuaire de Djen Djen, official pages “The Port,” “Maritime Traffic 2025,” “Port Traffic Unloading 2025,” “Port Traffic Loading 2025”; Serport, press release of December 17, 2025; statements by the Minister of Public Works of December 14, 2024; Radio algérienne, April 8 and June 11, 2026 on the state of the expansion studies.

Morocco — Tanger Med Port Authority, 2025 traffic press release of February 2, 2026; 2023 CSR and financial report for nominal capacity; Alphaliner ranking carried by La Vie éco; Moroccan Ministry of Equipment, 2025 port traffic dashboard; Moroccan Ministry of Equipment via Ecofin, September 2, 2026, for Dakhla Atlantique; maroc.ma and Daily Trust for the Morocco–Nigeria gas pipeline; Hespress, English edition, May 2, 2026.

Final note on method. Years differ across indicators, because institutions publish at different rates. We kept the year of each measurement rather than smoothing it out. It is less elegant, it is more honest.