Reply to Abdou Semmar, the néo-HARKI: “Replacing the Chinese with the French” — the analysis collapses on one fact

Selma Bouzid — Alger, Algérie — 2026-09-20

Note on method. We listened to Abdou Semmar's chronicle in full, and we quote him without distorting him. Every fact is dated and attributed. We begin with what is right — because you can only properly refute what you have first listened to. And we end with the question that no contributor raised: the question of our own quays.

A clarification on the title of this file, because we do not choose it out of a taste for invective. The expression “néo-harki” (a neo-harki) is ours, and we stand by it: it is a political judgement, not a fact. We apply it to a journalist who devotes a chronicle to explaining to Algeria what it should do with its own ports, and who concludes that it should prefer a foreign power there — one that is, at the same time, the leading supporter of our regional competitor on the question of the Sahara.

We judge neither a man, nor a nationality, nor a faith: we judge acts and sentences. Those that motivate this judgement are in this file, and they are his. If Abdou Semmar publishes a denial, we will publish it — in the same three languages and in the same place.

⚖️ First: what the video gets right

It has to be granted to him, otherwise what follows is worth nothing.

1. CMA CGM does not build ports. That is correct, and it is even the strongest point of the whole analysis. The group's core business is maritime shipping, ship management and terminal operation. It is not a builder.

2. CMA CGM is strongly established in Morocco. That is correct too, and it is verifiable. In October 2024, CMA CGM and the Moroccan public operator Marsa Maroc created a joint venture to equip and operate for twenty-five years half of the Nador West Med container terminal — 49 % for the French group, 51 % for the Moroccan operator, with an announced investment of 280 million dollars. The group also holds positions in Casablanca and Tangier.

3. The El Hamdania project, signed with the Chinese, was never built. That is true, and it is a failure. We will come back to it, because the reasons matter.

4. And the general reasoning — “a group already solidly established at your competitor will be less committed at your place” — is not absurd. It is an argument from experience, not an insult. It deserves an answer, not a shrug.

❌ Error No. 1: he asks “why would they come?” — they came

Here is the sentence that structures the whole programme: “This Nador West project, it is ambitious. Why would you want him to come to Algeria?” And further on: “The meeting that was granted […] just has favourable declarations about extending CMA CGM's activities in Algeria. No figure, no precise project.”

The problem is that this is not what happened.

Rodolphe Saadé, chairman and chief executive officer of CMA CGM, was received by the President of the Republic. The meeting, initially planned for April, had been postponed because of a diplomatic crisis between Paris and Algiers, and then it took place — with the Transport Minister present. And two precise projects were put on the table: the ports of ORAN and DJEN DJEN.

It is not us saying so. It is reported by the specialised press, and it is written in black and white: “CMA CGM avanza en sus proyectos portuarios en Argelia con inversiones en Orán y Djen Djen” — CMA CGM is moving forward with its port projects in Algeria with investments in Oran and Djen Djen.

And here is what the executive himself declared, quoted by the media:

“We can be an ally of Algeria in developing its infrastructure and making its ports true regional hubs. I strongly believe in the potential of this country.”

Measure the gap. The programme asserts that there is “no precise project”. The facts say: a container terminal at Oran, targeting a capacity of more than one million containers a year; an investment plan in the process of being finalised; and a Marseille–Oran maritime line operated by La Méridionale, a subsidiary of the group, to bring transit time under forty-eight hours.

That is not the same thing. You can criticise a project — you cannot say it does not exist.

❌ Error No. 2: he cites the figure of 80 % without seeing what it says

Let us listen to him again: “It holds practically even 80 % of the Algerian market. It is the leading carrier of goods and containers to Algeria from abroad. It is present in nine Algerian ports.”

He gives this figure as an argument against CMA CGM — and he does not see that he has just described the real problem.

What must be added, and what is decisive: until the meeting, CMA CGM operated in nine Algerian ports — Algiers, Oran, Djen Djen, Béjaïa, Annaba, Skikda, Ghazaouet — without holding a single concession. Calls, volume, freight. No assets. No responsibility on Algerian soil.

In other words: a shipping line held close to four fifths of our maritime trade, and owned nothing among us. It took the freight, set its rates, arbitrated its calls — and had no commitment towards our quays.

And now it is asking for the quays.

Here is the real question, and the programme misses it: what happens when the one who carries 80 % of your goods also obtains the operation of your terminals? It then holds the ship, the quay and the client. It is no longer a partner: it is a key that locks from the outside.

We are not saying it must be refused. We are saying the question is not “French or Chinese”. The question is: what consideration, what duration, what reversibility, and what control. A country that asks only what nationality the investor is has already lost the negotiation.

❌ Error No. 3: three different trades taken for one

The whole programme rests on a confusion, and it must be named clearly.

Three trades. Three contracts. Three logics. And the programme treats them as one — which is why it concludes that the Chinese should be “replaced by the French”.

But you do not replace a builder with an operator. You do not ask a shipping line to pour quays. A port is built, equipped and operated — and these are three distinct contracts, with distinct actors, which can be awarded separately. That is precisely the interest of the public authority: keeping a hand on each of the three.

And the programme says it itself, without realising: “CMA CGM first of all it does not build ports. […] even if it has subsidiaries that in their activities come close to this kind of construction.” It notes the confusion, then draws a conclusion from it. That is exactly the opposite of what should have been done.

❌ Error No. 4: “the Chinese are not present in Morocco”

This claim comes back twice in the programme, and it carries the whole argument: “The Chinese are not present in Morocco. The one who is present in Morocco is CMA CGM.” And again: “We had to bring back the Chinese who are not present in Morocco.”

That is false. China is a major economic partner of Morocco, and its presence in North Africa has been documented for years — in industry, infrastructure and trade. To maintain that a Chinese company would not be interested in a Moroccan market is to ignore the most elementary reality of international trade: there is no such thing as a reserved market.

And there is an error of reasoning, more serious than the error of fact. Even if it were true, it would prove nothing. A company not yet present somewhere does not stay absent on principle: it comes when the tender is serious. It is not nationality that brings an investor, it is legal certainty.

❌ Error No. 5: the port that waits seven days

There is a figure the programme does not mention, and it changes the whole reasoning: the port of Algiers records waiting times of more than seven days.

Seven days. A ship immobilised for a week means freight that does not circulate, containers piling up, goods waiting — and an extra cost that always ends up on the importer's bill, and then on that of the Algerian consumer.

And that is precisely the argument put forward by the French group: to unclog the port of Algiers by developing Oran and Djen Djen.

One can argue about the method, the price, the counterparts. But one cannot treat as treason a proposal that attacks a problem every Algerian importer knows by heart. The country has a saturated port. It needs quays, gantry cranes and deadlines. Shouting conspiracy does not make ships leave any faster.

🔴 And the question the programme does not ask — the real one

Here it is. Who operates the Algiers and Djen Djen terminals today? An Emirati operator: DP World. The programme, moreover, mentions it in passing, in half a sentence, without stopping at it.

Yet on 10 September 2026, Algeria severed its diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. It gave the ambassador forty-eight hours to leave the territory, and it closed its airspace to Emirati aircraft.

So the real question is not: “should the French be preferred to the Chinese?” The real question is: what do we do with an Emirati concession-holder that operates two of our port terminals, the day after a rupture with its state?

That is the subject. A port entrusted for decades to an operator whose state has just severed ties with us — and no one, in this twenty-three-minute programme devoted to maritime freight, says this sentence.

One may dislike CMA CGM. But anyone who talks about our ports without talking about DP World is not talking about our ports.

⚖️ What we concede, because it is true

First: the El Hamdania project was never built, and we will not deny it. A memorandum of understanding signed on 17 January 2016, two decrees declaring it to be in the public interest, a state agency created by decree, expropriations compensated — and on the site today, a metal fence and levelled ground. We devote a whole section to it below, because this affair deserves better than a one-line concession: it deserves to be explained.

Second: the government's choice to move the central port to Dellys or Cap Djinet deserves to be explained. The head of Serport announced this change on national radio, explaining that it is “the only sheltered place left on the Algerian coast”. That is an argument. It will have to be documented, and compared with the 2015 studies. A change of site of this magnitude, ten years later, demands written reasons.

Third: the concern about the loyalty of an investor already installed at a competitor is legitimate. The Renault precedent — present in Tangier before coming to Oued Tlelat — shows that a group can treat two neighbouring markets very differently. It is not proof, but it is a precedent, and it counts.

Fourth: and we say it plainly — we are not the ones negotiating. We know neither the amount, nor the duration, nor the counterparts of the projects mentioned. We have not seen them, and we will not present them as if they existed on paper. Our entire criticism bears on the reasoning, not on a contract that no one has published.

Note on method. This section corrects an attractive thesis that we will not write, and it brings a fact that nobody has cited. In it we separate three things: what is documented, what is reported, and what we think.

🧱 El Hamdania: neither a shameful failure, nor a fine defence of sovereignty

A question that nobody settles has to be settled, and we are going to do it honestly — including against ourselves. The thesis in circulation is simple: if the port was not built, it is because Algeria refused to sell off its sovereignty. It is attractive. We tested it. Here is what it yields.

First, what is established, and does not depend on any interpretation. Work on the site stopped in February 2019. And the Algerian government gave no official explanation — this is not our claim: it is written by the United States Department of Commerce, in a fact sheet dated 29 March 2020. **Since then, a journalist from Independent Arabia went to see the site, on 6 June 2020. He found an iron fence, and he writes that “nothing has been done except the levelling of the ground”.**

Then, what is more serious than the halt itself. A minister admitted publicly, on 12 May 2024: “I don't believe in it”, and the works are “at a standstill”. **The expropriations were paid for: more than two hundred owners, five hundred billion centimes deposited with the Treasury, according to Algerie-eco of 6 May 2018. And the losses have never been officially quantified. We had the two most recent annual reports of the Court of Accounts searched — two hundred and nine and one hundred and seventy-nine pages, full text: the port of El Hamdania does not appear in them a single time.**

Finally, the contradiction that nobody explains. In June 2025, an official Algerian source told TSA that “there was never any contract between Algeria and China for the construction of this project”. Yet the deeds exist: a protocol signed in January 2016 before two ministers and two walis, two decrees declaring the project to be in the public interest, a decree creating a dedicated state agency in December 2020, compensated expropriations, a joint venture announced in 2023. Both versions cannot be true at the same time. We do not settle it: we record it.

So much for the facts. Now to the sovereignty thesis, and let us see what it is worth — argument by argument.

First: no source, absolutely none, documents a Chinese demand for a sovereign guarantee on this project. We looked. There is none. And what is documented says almost the opposite. An official Algerian source, quoted by TSA on 9 June 2025, explains it in one sentence: “They did not want to be involved in the management and operation of the port, that is to say in taking on risk.” Translation: the Chinese partners wanted to finance and build — but not to operate. They refused the commercial risk. And Algeria, for its part, wanted to keep fifty-one per cent and the management. The deadlock therefore concerned the division of roles, not a guarantee clause.

That does not mean such a demand was impossible. It is documented elsewhere, word for word, for the same bank: in Ecuador, an official parliamentary report of 1 September 2022 establishes that, for the Coca Codo Sinclair dam and a loan of more than one billion six hundred million dollars, Exim Bank required, “in addition to the sovereign guarantee”, a guarantee and administration trust “for the benefit of the bank itself”, with a sovereign immunity clause. We can therefore neither affirm nor exclude that such a requirement was made in Algiers. We say only this: nobody has ever published it.

Second: the military-site thesis does not hold either, and we are the ones who lose it. Cherchell hosts a joint-services military academy; that is public fact. But no source — official, journalistic, academic or parliamentary — links that academy to the port of El Hamdania, and no official has ever invoked national defence to explain the halt, the delay or the relocation of the project. So we will not write it, even though that explanation would suit us. The genuinely documented grounds for contesting the site are different, and they are serious: the declassification of nearly five hundred hectares of forest, prior underwater archaeological digs, Roman remains invoked, and quarries disputed on the flank of Mount Chenoua.

Third: we checked the countries that are always cited to us, and the result is not what people assume. None of the cases studied shows a sovereign guarantee being called and causing the loss of a port. Sri Lanka did not lose Hambantota through a debt-for-equity swap: it surrendered a ninety-nine-year operating concession. Djibouti was not seized: it obtained a four-year moratorium from China Exim Bank, running from 2023 to 2027. And Angola, the only case in our entire file of an escrow account actually being drawn on, did so itself, voluntarily, in order to repay faster. The real channel of loss is the long concession — not the guarantee.

And here is the counter-example that should close this debate: Ethiopia carries Chinese debt of more than five billion dollars, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) records in its case, in black and white, “no collateralised debt”. A poor, heavily indebted country, engaged in a large Chinese railway project, and it pledged no revenue. The sovereign guarantee is therefore a contractual choice. It is not inevitable.

So what is true in the sovereignty thesis? This, and it is documented. Algeria had an openly stated doctrine of refusing external debt. Prime Minister Sellal ruled it out explicitly on 22 November 2015; Prime Minister Ouyahia reaffirmed, on 15 December 2016, that “the prohibition is still in force”. And the context explains that rigidity: foreign-exchange reserves fell from one hundred and forty-four point one billion dollars to one hundred and fourteen point one billion in 2016, according to the governor of the Bank of Algeria. A country that loses thirty billion dollars of reserves in one year does not sign just any contract. Refusing was therefore defensible — and we do not hold it against it.

But here is our conclusion, and it is twofold. Yes, Algeria had the right to refuse a structure in which it financed without controlling the operation. And no, that refusal does not explain ten years of silence. After saying no, a state must say what it is doing instead, how much that costs, and when. That is what is missing. It is not sovereignty that failed at El Hamdania: it is the explanation.

⚓ Thirty years, until 2039: the quay nobody looks at

And there is one thing we have no right to keep quiet, because it is verifiable, dated, and heavier than everything that precedes it. While this country has spent ten years debating the nationality of its investors — Chinese, French, Emirati — a foreign operator already runs two of our ports. Its name is DP World. It is Emirati.

The facts, with their dates. The concession contract was signed in November 2008. The transfer agreement was signed on 31 May 2009 at the Jazira hotel, in Jijel, between the chairman and chief executive of the port of Djen Djen and DP World's representative for Africa. Operations began on 3 June 2009. And the term is thirty years.

Thirty years. That means: until 2039.

What that represents, in figures published by the operator itself. At Djen Djen: seventy-six hectares, a capacity of two million containers a year, and one thousand five hundred and ninety metres of quay at seventeen metres of draught. At the port of Algiers: thirty hectares, seven hundred and fifty-five thousand six hundred containers a year, two berths of three hundred metres, with draughts of up to eleven metres.

We consulted DP World's website on 21 September 2026 — ten days after the rupture between Algiers and Abu Dhabi. Both Algerian terminals are still presented there as its own, on live pages linked to one another.

And here is what, in our view, is the central fact of this file: no official Algerian statement — presidency, Ministry of Transport, port authority, Serport, Entreprise portuaire de Djen Djen — has announced a termination, a withdrawal, a suspension or a modification of that concession. No legal instrument made public documents a transfer of shares, a nationalisation or an expropriation. Ten days after breaking with the Emirates, we have still said nothing about our own quays.

**An Algerian economist, the former parliamentarian Abdelkader Brich, quoted by The New Arab on 15 September 2026, sums up the situation better than we can: the concession, he says, “has not officially expired, and should run until 2039”, while the partnership is experiencing “a practical freeze on the ground”. That is an analysis, not an official decision — and we present it as such.**

Now measure the gap. A twenty-three-minute chronicle devoted to Algerian maritime freight. It spends its time explaining why we should not entrust our ports to the French, because the French are already in Morocco. And, in half a sentence, without pausing over it, it mentions that the operator of our terminals in Algiers and Djen Djen is Emirati. That is the subject. The rest is a quarrel over flags.

🔁 And now the answer: Djen Djen, the Sahel, and the loop that has to be closed

Saying what has not been done is not enough. We must say what can be — and be honest about what remains to be done.

Let us start with what already exists, because it is real and nobody says it. Since October 2024, Djen Djen has been receiving container ships three times larger than before: six thousand twenty-foot equivalent units, against two thousand five hundred. And in May 2026, four new quays were brought into service — four times two hundred metres, that is eight hundred linear metres, with seventeen metres of draught. This is not an announcement: it is a structure.

Then comes the project, and it must be stated exactly. The deep-water extension aims at twenty-six million tonnes of goods and five million containers a year, with quays at twenty metres of depth. The costing announced by the Minister of Transport, on 6 January 2025: three hundred and ten billion dinars, about two point three billion dollars, to extend the main dyke by three thousand one hundred metres, build a three-thousand-metre quay and a one-thousand-three-hundred-metre breakwater — in forty-eight months.

And here is what must be written, even if it is unpleasant to read: this project is not under construction. As of 21 September 2026, it is at the preliminary design stage. The Minister of Public Works chaired a meeting on 11 June 2026 on “the progress of the studies”, in the presence of a consortium of design firms led by the Italian firm Modimar; navigation trials were run on a simulator at the maritime studies and techniques centre in Genoa, Italy; a marine geotechnical survey is running around the clock, reinforced by a second barge. No foundation stone, no service order, no delivery schedule — and no identified financing. The figure of three hundred and ten billion dinars is a need estimated by a minister, not a budget line.

We do not write this to discourage: we write it because it is the condition for what follows to be credible. A newspaper that announced “Djen Djen, the giant port that will feed the Sahel” would be telling a story. We give the state of the file.

And here is why this file is worth following, even though the work has not begun.

The Sahel is landlocked, and that is a geographical fact that cannot be negotiated. Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad have no sea. They therefore depend on corridors that are not theirs: Dakar–Bamako, through which two to three million tonnes pass each year — more than sixty per cent of Mali's imports — and nearly four hundred trucks a day; Abidjan–Ouagadougou, about one thousand one hundred and fifty kilometres, of which the rail line carries only nine hundred thousand tonnes a year; Cotonou–Niamey, Niger's main access route; and Douala–N'Djamena, where fifty-seven checkpoints line the road, with an extra cost estimated at two hundred and twenty-five thousand CFA francs per trip and illicit payments reaching one hundred and seventy-five billion CFA francs a year.

And these roads are not safe. The OECD (OCDE) and the Club du Sahel note, in February 2025, that nearly seventy per cent of violent incidents in the region occur within a few kilometres of the main trunk roads. The blockade of the Kayes-Nioro axis by JNIM, from June 2025, caused fuel shortages in Mali, the halt of its gold sector, and the suspension of classes across the country at the end of October 2025.

That is the hinterland. That is what the Sahel lacks: not a port, but an outlet that depends neither on a single axis, nor on a single neighbour.

And Algeria says it wants to be that outlet. The President of the Republic declared on 4 September 2025, at the opening of the Intra-African Trade Fair, that “it is conceivable that, within five or six years at the latest, Algerian ports will become transit points for goods from African countries without a maritime coastline” — he himself added: “that is the plan”.

On 21 April 2026, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Attaf was even more precise: he stressed “the particular importance of the port of Djen Djen (Jijel) as a commercial gateway for the countries of the Sahel and the Sahara, first among them the fraternal Republic of Chad”. And on 27 July 2026, the president named Djen Djen a second time, linking it to Niger, Chad and Mali.

So we have the official designation: it is named, dated, and we quote it. But we must state the rest, because that is our job. No operational agreement has been made public — no tariff, no quota, no customs regime, no tonnage commitment. And no international organisation — neither the World Bank (Banque mondiale), nor UNCTAD, nor the African Union — takes up that designation. The promise is Algerian, and for now it is purely declaratory.

One link remains, and it has been the same problem from the start: the rail. A port without a railway to the south is a quay on the sea. Yet the line to Tamanrasset has not been delivered — the Council of Ministers of 6 September 2026 again called for its delivery “within the allotted deadlines”, which is a way of saying that it has not been.

But now see how the pieces fit together — and why this is not a port file.

A Sahel country that wants to reach the sea through Algeria needs a deep-water port, a railway, a road, and security on that road. It needs, in other words, logistics. And a joint Sahelian force — the one we have already written would require twenty-five thousand men, financing and steel — needs exactly the same thing: a supply corridor that crosses neither a hostile country nor an area held by an armed group.

That is where the loop closes, and that is where everyone wins. Chad, Niger and Mali gain one more outlet — therefore less dependence, and a better balance of power with their coastal neighbours. Algeria no longer sells only gas: it sells a service, and it holds a position. And the joint force gains the only thing that makes it credible: a road of its own.

A port is not a monument. It is a balance of power.

El Hamdania taught us what must not be signed without guarantees. Djen Djen must now prove what we know how to build — and it no longer has the right to wait, because, for the first time, what is at stake is not only our economy, but our place in a region that is looking for a door.

🎯 The conclusion, in five sentences

Abdou Semmar's chronicle asks why CMA CGM would come to Algeria: it came, its chairman was received, and he asked for Oran and Djen Djen.

It cites the figure of eighty per cent of the Algerian market as an argument against the group — whereas that figure says exactly the opposite: a shipowner that carries four fifths of our freight without owning a single quay is already, in fact, our operator.

And while it sets France against China, it forgets to say that the concession operating our terminals in Algiers and Djen Djen is Emirati, that it was signed in 2008 and 2009, and that it runs until 2039 — ten days after our rupture with Abu Dhabi, without any public decision having been taken.

The failure of El Hamdania is real, but it is not where people say it is: it is not sovereignty that failed, it is the explanation — ten years, not one quay, not one official figure for the cost, and not one line in the reports of the Court of Accounts.

And the answer is not to choose between Paris, Beijing and Abu Dhabi: it is to finish Djen Djen, to link it to the South, and to make it the gateway to a Sahel that has no sea. That is the subject. The rest is a quarrel over flags.

🔗 The sources, in direct access — click and check for yourself

• The Oran and Djen Djen projects, the meeting with the President, the postponement of the meeting, and the executive's declaration “we can be an ally of Algeria” — El Estrecho Digital, 9 June 2025 : https://www.elestrechodigital.com/2025/06/09/cma-cgm-avanza-en-sus-proyectos-portuarios-en-argelia-con-inversiones-en-oran-y-djen-djen
• The same projects, the intention to lease the Oran container terminal, the target of one million containers a year, the Marseille–Oran line and the seven days of waiting at the port of Algiers — The Maritime Executive : https://maritime-executive.com/index.php/article/cma-cgm-pursues-port-investment-in-algeria
• “In Algeria, CMA CGM weighs heavy… without owning a single quay”: the nine ports, the absence of any concession, the reminder that the concessions went to public operators or to supervised partnerships — including that of the Emirati DP World for Algiers and Djen Djen — Maghreb Émergent : https://maghrebemergent.news/fr/en-algerie-cma-cgm-pese-lourd-sans-posseder-un-seul-quai/
• The Oran project: renovation, automation, integrated logistics base, more than 2 000 direct jobs estimated — Maghreb Émergent, same article.
• The change of site of the central port, announced by the head of Serport: “the Boumerdès option prevails, it is going to be Dellys or Cap Djinet”, and the extension of Djen Djen into a deep-water port — TSA Algérie : https://www.tsa-algerie.com/lalgerie-change-de-cap-pour-son-grand-port-du-centre/
• The CMA CGM – Marsa Maroc joint venture to equip and operate half of the Nador West Med container terminal — official press release of the group : https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/4902/cma-cgm-and-marsa-maroc-join-forces-in-a-joint-venture-to-equip-and-operate-half-of-the-nador-west-med-container-terminal

• El Hamdania: the February 2019 halt and the absence of any official explanation — United States Department of Commerce, 29 March 2020: https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/algerias-el-hamdania-port
• The state of the site: “an iron fence” and “nothing has been done except the levelling of the ground” — Independent Arabia, 6 June 2020: https://www.independentarabia.com/node/125121
• “I don't believe in it”, the works “at a standstill”, and “the site has not moved” — Ali Aoun, Minister of Industry, El Moudjahid forum, reported by TSA, 13 May 2024: https://www.tsa-algerie.com/algerie-son-mega-port-du-centre-entre-parentheses/
• “There was never any contract between Algeria and China”: the official statement that contradicts the administrative record — an official Algerian source quoted by TSA, 9 June 2025: https://www.tsa-algerie.com/grand-port-du-centre-lalgerie-a-t-elle-retire-le-projet-a-la-chine/

• The expropriations: 500 billion centimes for more than 200 owners, sums deposited with the Public Treasury — Algerie-eco, 6 May 2018: https://algerie-eco.com/2018/05/06/port-del-hamdania-les-expropriations-couteront-plus-de-5-milliards-de-da/
• The Algerian doctrine of refusing external debt, and the fall in foreign-exchange reserves from 144.1 to 114.1 billion dollars in 2016 — Xinhua, 22 November 2015: http://en.chinagate.cn/2015-11/22/content_37126779.htm — Radio Algérienne, 29 January 2017: https://radioalgerie.dz/news/fr/node/101363
• “In addition to the sovereign guarantee”: the trust in favour of Exim Bank, in Ecuador — official Ecuadorian parliamentary report on the Coca Codo Sinclair dam, 1 September 2022: https://www.asambleanacional.gob.ec/sites/default/files/private/asambleanacional/filesasambleanacionalnameuid-591/INFORME%20FINAL%20COCA%20CODO%20SINCLAIR.pdf
• Ethiopia: 5,175 million dollars of Chinese debt, or 2.5 per cent of GDP, and “no collateralised debt” — International Monetary Fund, Ethiopia country report, IMF Country Report 25/27, January 2025: https://web.archive.org/web/2025id_/https://www.elibrary.imf.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/002/2025/027/002.2025.issue-027-en.pdf

• The DP World concession: contract of November 2008, transfer agreement of 31 May 2009 for thirty years, start of operations on 3 June 2009 — Algérie 360, 1 June 2009: https://www.algerie360.com/bubai-port-world-se-voit-concede-le-port-de-djendjen/ — Khaleej Times, 3 June 2009: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/dp-world-begins-operations-at-port-of-djen-djen-2
• The two Algerian terminals as DP World itself presents them as at 21 September 2026 — the group's website: https://www.dpworld.com/en/ports-terminals/algeria/djendjen and https://www.dpworld.com/en/ports-terminals/algeria/djazair
• “The thirty-year concession has not officially expired and should run until 2039”, with “a practical freeze on the ground” — the Algerian economist Abdelkader Brich, quoted by The New Arab, 15 September 2026: https://www.newarab.com/news/algeria-uae-rupture-impacts-ports-industry-and-real-estate
• The diplomatic rupture with the Emirates and the closure of airspace, in force on 11 September 2026 — Radio Algérienne, 11 September 2026: https://news.radioalgerie.dz/

• Djen Djen: the operator's official traffic figures, and the 2025 retrospective — Entreprise portuaire de Djen Djen: https://djendjen-port.dz/retrospective-2025/ and https://djendjen-port.dz/trafic-maritime-2025/
• The extension project: 26 million tonnes, 5 million containers, 310 billion dinars, main dyke extended by 3,100 m, a 3,000 m quay at 20 m depth, a 1,300 m breakwater, 48 months — Saïd Sayoud, Minister of Transport, 6 January 2025, reported by Radio Algérienne: https://news.radioalgerie.dz/fr/node/57859
• The real state of play as at 11 June 2026: a meeting on “the progress of the studies”, a consortium led by Modimar, simulator trials at the Genoa centre, a marine geotechnical survey — Ministry of Public Works, reported by Radio Algérienne, 11 June 2026: https://news.radioalgerie.dz/fr/node/88079 — and APS, 8 April 2026: https://www.aps.dz/fr/economie/habitat-et-infrastructure/mnqc9f11-djellaoui-ordonne-d-accelerer-l-etude-du-projet

• The Sahel corridors and their figures: Dakar–Bamako, Abidjan–Ouagadougou, Cotonou–Niamey, Douala–N'Djamena — Banque mondiale, Promouvoir la diversification des exportations dans les pays fragiles, 2020: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/172191591022643105/txt/Leveraging-Export-Diversification-in-Fragile-Countries-The-Emerging-Value-Chains-of-Mali-Chad-Niger-and-Guinea.txt — and Policy Center for the New South, Corridors of the Alliance of Sahel States, December 2025: https://www.policycenter.ma/sites/default/files/2025-12/PB_67-25_Chaima%20Jabbar%20AN.pdf
• “Nearly 70 per cent of violent incidents occur within a few kilometres of the main trunk roads” — OCDE / Club du Sahel et de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, Roads and Conflicts in North and West Africa, February 2025
• The official designation of Djen Djen as the gateway to the Sahel — Ahmed Attaf, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 21 April 2026, Radio Algérienne: https://news.radioalgerie.dz/en/node/84403
• “Within five or six years at the latest […] That is the plan” — Abdelmadjid Tebboune, President of the Republic, 4 September 2025, opening speech at the Intra-African Trade Fair: https://en.yabiladi.com/articles/details/175769/algeria-competes-morocco-connect-sahel.html
• The railway line to Tamanrasset not delivered, delivery still demanded “within the allotted deadlines” — Council of Ministers of 6 September 2026, APS communiqué: https://www.aps.dz/es/presidencia-news/mtr0lj3j-linea-ferroviaria-que-conecta-tamanrasset-con-el-norte-del-pais-una-realizacion-inedita-en-la-argelia-victoriosa

These links open the documents cited directly, with their dates. The third is the most important: it establishes the central fact of this file — nine ports, 80 % of the market, and not a single concession.

Final note. We have not seen the contracts mentioned in Oran and Djen Djen, and we do not know what they contain: so we do not present them as concluded agreements. We have no Algerian official document on the exact nature of the demands made, and we invent none. And we listened to Abdou Semmar's chronicle in full: we answer what he said publicly, quoting him, and we will publish his response if it reaches us.