• Home
• /
• Opinion

Lessons Algeria can learn from its football team

The revolution that has unfolded this year in Africa's largest country (by territory) has broad support.

Algeria's recent victory in the Africa Cup of Nations - the continent's biennial men's football (soccer) championship - was not just the triumphant culmination of a highly contested tournament. Coming nearly five months into a popular uprising that has already driven Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power, it also provides a way to understand the economic reforms the country desperately needs.
The revolution that has unfolded this year in Africa's largest country (by territory) has broad support. Like so many of the region's protest movements, Algeria's has been energised by young people who are frustrated by a lack of economic opportunity. Annual GDP growth currently amounts to less than 2 per cent - one-third of the level needed to create enough jobs for Algeria's fast-growing working-age population.
The key to addressing the protesters' frustrations is completing the transition from an administered to a market economy. But this prospect arouses considerable mistrust in Algeria, where many blame market liberalisation for the rise of crony capitalism, with the commanding heights of the economy in the hands of a few oligarchs.
In reality, that phenomenon is the result of decades of state dominance. Algeria's government - led for the last 20 years by Bouteflika - effectively encouraged state or private monopolies in many industries by maintaining dynamism-depleting subsidies and price controls. This has deterred foreign investment and prevented countless talented Algerians from prospering.
Just as a football team can win only if it includes the most gifted, high-performing players - rather than those with the most money or connections - an economy can thrive only by unleashing the potential of its most capable actors. By allowing market mechanisms to function, Algeria can create a more level playing field, on which talented upstarts can challenge low-performing incumbents.
Yet such efforts would mean little if talented players didn't have an incentive to compete. Creating a winning national football team required mobilising the top Algerian talents playing around the world.
Similarly, capable Algerians - many of whom benefitted from the country's massive investments in education since independence in 1962, but left home in search of economic opportunity - need to be convinced to return.
No team can operate effectively, however, without a good coach. To that end, qualified public- and private-sector actors must be empowered to guide development, while modern corporate-governance structures must replace, at firm level, the top-down approach that insulated managers from accountability.
Finally, just as a football game needs a credible referee, an economy needs independent regulators to keep the game fair.
But creating such structures is only the first step. Given Algerians' fear of market liberalisation, steps must also be taken to foster public trust in regulators. Here, technology-based measures, such as digitalising payments, procurements, and social services, can help, much in the way that video footage can settle disagreements on the football pitch.
Now, Algeria must build on the momentum that the current movement has created, and implement bold economic reforms that enable the country to unleash the vast potential of its large, young, and educated population. That would amount to a victory far more momentous than any football tournament could ever provide.
- Project Syndicate
Rabah Arezki is Chief Economist of the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa Region