Algeria versus Morocco: What the Numbers Really Say — and What They Say About Two Models of Country

Anne Vanderlinden — Bruxelles, Belgique — 2026-09-11

Note on method. Every figure in this investigation carries its source and its year. We used the official data of the World Bank, SIPRI, Global Firepower, Yale (Environmental Performance Index), Eurostat, the UN, OAPEC, IRENA and the USGS. Where a figure was missing, we say so. And where Morocco is ahead of Algeria, we say that too — because a comparison that never loses is worth nothing.

There are two ways to judge a country. The first is to measure its openness: how many tourists it attracts, how much money it receives from abroad, what rating the banks give it. The second is to measure its substance: does it feed its people, does it care for them, does it educate them, does it produce its own energy, does it go into debt.

These two grids do not tell the same story. And when you apply them to Algeria and Morocco, they describe two countries that are not after the same thing.

Here is the file, figure by figure.

⚔️ 1. Military power: Algeria dominates, no discussion

Algeria spends four times more on its defense than Morocco. And the Global Firepower comparator, which crosses eight axes, gives Algeria the win on seven of the eight — Morocco prevails only on geography.

A word of context, to grasp the order of magnitude: Algeria devotes nearly a quarter of its state budget to its defense. That is the price of a doctrine: depending on no one for your security.

⚡ 2. Energy: the point where the gap turns dizzying

And here is what those figures mean for Europe. Eurostat 2024 data:

Spain and Italy depend on Algiers for nearly 40% of their gas. From Morocco, Europe imports not one molecule: in fossil energy terms, Morocco is not a supplier — it is a customer.

💰 3. GDP and income per capita: Algeria ahead

Algeria produces about 30% more wealth per capita than Morocco. It also counts eight million more inhabitants — and a more urbanized population.

💸 4. Debt: Algeria ahead — but watch the trajectory

This is one of the most commented-on points, and also the one that calls for the most precision.

Let us read that table without triumphalism — because it carries a warning.

Today Algeria is markedly less indebted: around 52 to 54% of GDP against 67.1% for Morocco, according to 2025 IMF data. (The two Algerian figures in circulation — 52.1% in the IMF's July 2026 statement, 54.1% in the institution's database — reflect slightly different perimeters; we give the range rather than a single number.)

But its deficit is three times higher: on the order of 10.5% of GDP against 3.5%. A deficit of that size, year after year, drives the debt up. The 2026 budget even projects a Treasury deficit of 12.4% of GDP.

⚠️ A point of honesty: a projection putting Algerian debt at 85.9% of GDP in 2031 is in circulation. We did not retain it — we could not verify it at the source, because the IMF website blocks automated access. We would rather give up a figure than publish an unconfirmed one.

🌾 5. Food self-sufficiency: the figure that surprises

This is where perhaps the most revealing comparison of all is played out.

Let us read that table without cheating.

Algeria has 2.5% of its population living in a state of undernourishment. Morocco, 7%. And that Algerian 2.5% is exactly France's level.

Algeria produces nearly a third more cereals than Morocco, with a better yield per hectare and more arable land — on a territory where only 17.4% of the surface is agricultural, against 66.7% in Morocco. Put another way: Morocco has four times more cultivable land in proportion, and it produces fewer cereals.

🧬 6. The HDI: Algeria ahead, and by twenty-four places

It is the most cited index in the world for judging a country's development. It is published every year by the United Nations Development Programme, and it combines three dimensions: health, education and income.

Twenty-four places apart. That is no detail: it is the most widely recognized synthetic measure in the world, and it places Algeria ahead of Morocco. It confirms, in a single figure, everything the preceding tables showed separately — a population that lives longer, studies longer and commands more income.

And the figure that carries furthest: when you adjust the HDI for inequality, the gap does not narrow — it widens. The adjusted index is 0.601 for Algeria against 0.517 for Morocco, with a loss of 21.2% on the Algerian side against 27.2% on the Moroccan one. Put another way: Algerian wealth is better distributed than Moroccan wealth — on the UNDP's scale.

🏥 7. Health, education, living conditions: what is never shown

One word on sanitation: figures are circulating (62.5% in Algeria against 8.4% in Morocco), but the gap is so implausible that we checked — and we are not publishing it. An indicator whose order of magnitude is doubtful is worth nothing, even when it flatters us.

And on education, Algeria enrolls more at the secondary level, more at the tertiary level, and far more women: 66.1% of students in higher education are women, against 53.5%.

🩺 8. What the state does for its people — the chapter nobody talks about

This is the most important comparison, and it is the one nobody makes. Not "which country is richer", but "what does the state do for those who live in it".

Medical staff: twice as many in Algeria

| Indicator | Algeria | Morocco | Year | Source |

|---|---|---|---|---|

| Doctors per 1,000 inhabitants | 1.66 | 0.74 | 2022 / 2021 | WHO |

| Hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants | 1.61 | 0.73 | 2017 / 2023 | WHO |

| Health ministry budget | — | MAD 42.4bn (8.8% of the budget) | 2026 | Moroccan ministry |

| Health spending per capita | $233.4 | $232.2 | 2023 | WHO |

| Health spending (% of GDP) | 4.35% | 6.06% | 2023 | WHO |

| Infant vaccination (DTP3) | 94% | 98% | 2024 | WHO / UNICEF |

| Healthy life expectancy (HALE) | 65.55 years | 62.34 years | 2019 | WHO |

| Tuberculosis (per 100,000 inhabitants) | 54 | 98 | 2023 | WHO |

| Out-of-pocket household spending on health | 45.0% | 37.3% | 2022 | WHO |

Algeria has 2.2 times more doctors and 2.2 times more beds per inhabitant. At identical spending per capita — 233 dollars against 232 — Algeria gets this result because its GDP is higher: it does not need to devote as many points of GDP to it.

And we have to be honest about the other column, because that is where Morocco achieves real results:

- Morocco devotes 6.06% of its GDP to health against 4.35% for Algeria;

- it vaccinates its infants better — 98% against 94%;

- it loses fewer children: 15.7 deaths before age five per thousand births against 21.6 in Algeria, and 9.6 neonatal deaths against 15.0;

- it leaves less to be paid by its households: 37.3% of health spending against 45.0% in Algeria;

- its health budget was multiplied by more than four between 2010 and 2026.

But there is a paradox the figures impose: Algeria loses more children and lives longer. Overall life expectancy is 76.5 years against 75.5, and above all the healthy life expectancy — the one that really counts — is 65.55 years against 62.34, a gap of more than three years. Algeria does not merely keep its people alive longer: it keeps them alive in better health.

Two models of protection: free care against insurance

In Algeria, care is free at the point of service. You walk into a public hospital, a polyclinic or a treatment room, and you are not handed a bill: the expense is carried by the state budget and the social funds. Three mechanisms structure this system:

• The Chifa card — the smart card of the social insured, issued by CNAS. Presented to a contracted doctor or pharmacist, it triggers third-party payment: the provider is paid directly by the fund, and the patient no longer advances the cost. In 2025, the Chifa card was extended to cancer patients who are not social security members — an explicit extension toward those who stood outside the system.
• 26 conditions covered at 100% — the official CNAS list: long-term illnesses, severe pathologies, kidney failure. It is, in law, the list of fully free care and medicines.
• Vaccination — the national program is mandatory and free for every child, with no insurance condition.

In 2024, coverage of Algerian social security members exceeded 630 billion dinars.

And the result reads in the coverage rates — with a caveat on the years of measurement:

Those two figures come from international sources, but the years of measurement differ — we flag it, and that is why we do not put them forward in the headline. The gap is nonetheless of such a magnitude that it describes a reality: in Algeria, old age is provided for; in Morocco, three times less so.

In Morocco, the choice is the reverse: access runs through insurance. RAMED (2012), an assistance scheme for the poorest, was replaced from December 2022 by AMO Tadamon, managed by the CNSS. The result is measurable: 3.9 million families, meaning 11 million newly insured, and coverage that rose from around 40% to 88% of the population (a figure from Morocco's health minister, December 2025).

What has to be said, because it is true: Morocco has broader formal coverage — 88% of the population insured, against an Algerian rate that is not published in consolidated form. But the nature of the mechanism differs: Moroccan insurance remains insurance, with copayments and advance payment of costs in many cases. Algeria offers less formal coverage and more real free care at the counter. Two philosophies: that of the insured, and that of the patient.

School: Algeria spends 50% more on it

Algeria devotes 9% of its national wealth to education, against 6% for Morocco. And the most telling result is the gap in women's literacy: 74.2% against 53.4%, a difference of twenty-one points.

Morocco does better at the primary level and places one university in the world's Top 1000. But at the secondary level it drops out: 90% against 105%. Put another way, young Moroccans enter school in greater numbers — and leave it earlier.

A caveat of honesty: the years of measurement for literacy differ (Algeria 2008 and 2019, Morocco 2014). The gap is nonetheless too wide to be an artifact of dating.

Purchasing power: Algeria is richer per capita and life there costs less

Algeria is 1.67 times richer per capita in purchasing power parity — and its cost-of-living index is lower than Morocco's. Together, the two give a higher real purchasing power, even if the Moroccan minimum wage, converted into euros, looks higher.

Morocco, by contrast, has a more advanced demographic transition: 16.4 births per thousand against 18.8, and 2.21 children per woman against 2.72.

Infrastructure: rail and road, and what must be acknowledged

Algeria has a road network more than twice as long and a rail network twice as long — 4,560 kilometers against 2,110. SNTF, the Algerian rail company, is moreover the second largest in Africa, behind South Africa, and carried 31 million passengers in 2025.

But Morocco has electrified around 60% of its rail, against 11.5% in Algeria, it runs the only high-speed line in Africa — Al Boraq —, it welcomes three times more air passengers and it owns the leading container port in the Mediterranean.

It is a difference of nature: Algeria built extent — 141,000 kilometers of roads to cover 2.38 million square kilometers. Morocco built speed and connection — on a territory six times smaller.

🌍 9. Environment: Yale's ranking is unequivocal

Yale ranks 177 countries on environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Algeria is 78th, Morocco 136th — and Algeria wins eight of the ten sub-categories. This is not a political ranking: it is an American university measuring data.

⚖️ 10. And now, honesty: where Morocco wins

We are not among those who never lose. Here are the fields where Morocco is ahead of Algeria, with the same sources.

🔍 What this table really means

Let us look at these two lists. Not with passion — with method.

Where Algeria wins: feeding its population, caring for it, educating it, protecting its environment, producing its energy, defending itself, not going into debt. These are assets — stocks.

Where Morocco wins: attracting, capturing, seducing, ranking. These are flows — momentum.

And now the question that matters: what are these two lists the name of?

Morocco wins on everything that depends on others. Its $12.5 billion in remittances are its children who left to work in Europe. Its 17 million tourists are Europeans on holiday. Its wind turbines were financed by foreign loans and partnerships. Its "investment grade" rating is handed to it by a jury of private banks. Its phosphate, it exports raw.

Algeria wins on everything that depends on itself. Its gas, it pulls from its own soil and sells. Its food, it produces. Its electricity, it generates. Its defense, it funds. Its debt, it never contracted.

Morocco is rated by the rating agencies because it borrows on international markets. Algeria is not because it does not need them. That is not a sign of weakness: it is a position. A country that does not borrow owes no account to anyone.

Morocco collects the money its children earn abroad. Algeria collects the money from its gas sold to Europe. It is not the same dignity — and it is not the same sovereignty.

⚠️ 12. A contradiction we cannot settle — and we say so

The honesty of an investigation is also measured by what it refuses to assert. On one point, our sources contradict each other, and we would rather write that down than pick the one that suits us.

On inequality, two first-rank institutions give opposite rankings:

Two different measures, two opposite conclusions. And neither can be dismissed: the first is too old (2011), the second measures something else (the wealth of the top centile, not the overall distribution).

Verdict: undetermined. We will not settle it. An article that always picks the source that flatters it is not an investigation — it is a press release.

🛢️ 13. The rent: what it finances, and where industrialization really stands

It has to be written, because it is the key to everything above — and because it is the subject on which the most approximations circulate.

The share of the rent, year by year

This table says something unpleasant, and we will not dress it up: since 2021, the hydrocarbon share has not fallen. It has risen by four points. Non-hydrocarbon exports fell 24% in the single year 2024, and the rate at which those exports cover imports dropped from 11.8% to 8.5%.

And there is something more troubling still: 74% of what is counted as "non-hydrocarbon" consists of semi-finished products — nitrogen fertilizers, ammonia, urea, pig iron and steel, cement. That is to say, for the most part, processed gas. Excluding hydrocarbon derivatives, Algerian exports do not exceed one billion dollars.

Yet something has genuinely begun — and that has to be said too

We will not claim that nothing is changing: that would be false, and the facts are there.

That is the real turning point, and it is real: Algeria has decided to stop selling its minerals raw, it is building the plants and the trains that go with them, and ordinary taxation — that is, the real economy — now finances nearly two-thirds of the budget.

But the reckoning has not come yet

Let us be precise, because this is where speeches part ways with statistics.

• Gara Djebilet shipped 1,450 tonnes. The target is 4 million tonnes a year: the first shipment represents 0.04% of the goal.
• The Bled El Hadba phosphate is not in production: technical studies will conclude at the end of 2026, then twenty-four to thirty-six months of construction. First production: around 2030 at the earliest. No exports to date.
• Green hydrogen is at the pilot stage: a 50-megawatt unit at Arzew, financed with 20 million euros from Germany. The 2030 target — 1 million tonnes a year — has no signed investment to date.
• Automotive produced 43,052 vehicles in 2025 — below the 2018 record of 70,597. No vehicle exports are documented.
• Dairy products: Algeria does not export any. It imports around 418,000 tonnes of milk powder a year, for an average bill of $1.6 billion. The Qatari Baladna project, in Adrar, is to produce its first tonnes at the end of 2027.

And a fact that has to be faced: imports have not fallen. They went from $42.8 to $45.3 billion between 2023 and 2024, then to around $48.8 billion in 2025. In July 2026 the IMF flagged a "considerable deterioration of the current account balance in 2025", caused by rising imports and falling hydrocarbon receipts.

The verdict, without complacency

Algeria has not yet left the rent behind. It is financing its industrialization with the rent.

That is not a reproach: it is how every country that got out did it — Norway, the Emirates, Indonesia. You do not leave a rent economy by abolishing it: you leave it from the top, by building with it an economy that ends up weighing more than the rent itself.

What is true is that the turn is engaged, financed, written into the Official Journal and already visible in concrete — 950 kilometers of railway, a first iron shipment, a ban on exporting raw minerals. What is false is to believe it is done. The only document that will tell whether 2025 marks the break is the Bank of Algeria's annual report — and it has not been published yet.

Industrializing a country takes ten years. China took thirty. The train left the desert in January 2026. It is running. That is already enormous — and it is not yet enough.

🎯 The conclusion: what feeds a people

Tourism does not feed a people.

It fills hotels — and hotels belong to owners. It keeps airlines, agencies and seaside groups alive. In Morocco, the big tourism, hotel and real estate groups are held by the same families that own the banks, the energy and the media. One more tourist in Marrakech is not one more meal on the plate of a farmer in the Middle Atlas.

Diaspora remittances do not develop a country either. They keep families alive, which is essential — but they go back out in consumption, in land and in buildings, not in factories. And a credit rating cures no one.

What feeds a people is something else. It is a doctor when you are sick. It is a school for your children. It is a meal on the table. It is a pension when you can no longer work. It is a pharmacy that does not ask you for money on the way out.

And on those questions — the ones that decide the daily life of 46 million people — here are the figures, side by side.

[[CHART]]

Population safe from undernourishment | 97.5 | 93.0 | %

Pension coverage | 88.6 | 23.4 | %

Women's literacy | 74.2 | 53.4 | %

Population covered by social protection | 60.2 | 20.5 | %

Healthy life expectancy | 65.55 | 62.34 | years

Education spending | 9.0 | 6.0 | % of GDP

Doctors per 1,000 inhabitants | 1.66 | 0.74 |

Hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants | 1.61 | 0.73 |

Human Development Index | 0.763 | 0.710 |

GDP per capita in purchasing power parity | 18,586 | 11,112 | $

[[/CHART]]

Look at this chart. It does not measure a country's attractiveness. It does not measure its image. It measures what a state does with its wealth. And on each of these ten lines, the green bar is longer.

Algeria made a simple choice, and that choice has a name. It takes the money from its gas and its oil — 92% of its exports, 46% of its receipts — and puts it into the hospital, the school, the pension, the pharmacy. The Chifa card, which is to say care paid by the fund and not by the patient. Free schooling all the way to university. The 26 illnesses covered at 100%. The vaccine mandatory and free for every child, with no insurance condition. A pension for nearly nine out of ten elderly people.

That is what a welfare state means. Not a slogan: a budget line.

And what we wrote above has to be repeated, because it is the condition of everything else: this generosity is financed by a rent. 92% hydrocarbon exports, a budget deficit at 10%, imports climbing. The day the barrel price falls durably, it is the hospital and school budget that trembles. That is exactly why industrialization matters — and why it must be judged on its results, not on its announcements.

But there is one thing the figures say that no press release can undo. A country that feeds 46 million inhabitants with 2.5% undernourishment — exactly France's level — a country with twice as many doctors per capita as its neighbor, a country that sends 66% of its women students to university, a country that guarantees a pension to nearly all of its elderly: that country does not merely exist on a map.

Morocco chose another path, and we have described it without caricaturing it: attracting capital, selling to Europeans, leaning on the great powers, getting rated by the banks. It is a coherent strategy, it delivers measurable results — and it has a price.

That price is that the wealth entering Morocco does not always cross the social border. It stops in the hotels, in the ports, in the office towers and in the accounts of those who own them.

Algeria took the opposite bet, and that bet costs it dearly: fewer foreign investors, fewer tourists, a less polished image, an economy still too dependent on its wells. But when you ask a people what it prefers — a five-star hotel for visitors, or a doctor for its children — the answer has never been a mystery.

📚 All the sources — so that everyone can check

We do not ask anyone to believe us. Here is where to find every figure.

Economic, social and demographic data — all from the World Bank (data consulted on September 11, 2026):

https://data.worldbank.org

And each country's page: https://data.worldbank.org/country/algeria · https://data.worldbank.org/country/morocco

Undernourishment and food production — FAO, taken up by the World Bank:

https://www.fao.org/faostat

Military spending and arms transfers — Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2025 data:

https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex

Military power ranking — Global Firepower, 2026 edition:

https://www.globalfirepower.com

Environmental performance — Environmental Performance Index, Yale University, 2026 edition (177 countries):

https://epi.yale.edu

European Union energy dependence — Eurostat, 2024 gas imports database:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nrg_ti_gas/default/table

Peacekeepers — United Nations Department of Peace Operations, February 28, 2026:

https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/troop-and-police-contributors

Oil and gas — Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), annual report:

https://oapecorg.org

Renewable energy — International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 2025:

https://www.irena.org/Data

Renewables' share of electricity — Ember, 2024:

https://ember-energy.org/data

Phosphate and mineral resources — United States Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026:

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026

Innovation — World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Global Innovation Index 2025:

https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index

Water stress — World Resources Institute, Aqueduct 4.0:

https://www.wri.org/aqueduct

Sovereign ratings — S&P Global Ratings, Moody's Ratings, Fitch Ratings. A clarification: Algeria is rated by none of the three agencies; Morocco is rated by all three (S&P BBB- since September 2025, Moody's Ba1 with a positive outlook since March 2026, Fitch BB+ since September 2025).

Note on method. Years differ from one indicator to another, because institutions publish at different rhythms. For each indicator we retained the latest year actually available — and we indicated it in every table. No figure in this investigation was estimated, converted or reconstructed by us.