Algeria

Algeria’s water market is state-led. The Ministry of Hydraulics sets policy, ADE and Sonatrach have been the off-takers for desalinated water, and the Algerian Desalination Company, a Sonatrach subsidiary, has been developer-owner of the desalination fleet, outright or through joint-venture project companies.¹ The plants of 2022 to 2025 were state-built, and a partnership law was reported in draft in March 2025. Five plants were commissioned in 2025 and a further seven, with 679 million cubic metres a year of capacity, are planned for 2030. The register tracks 27 schemes with US$ 6.6 bn of disclosed value.² Access is the constraint: the 2023 procurement law excludes partnership contracts from its scope, may require foreign bidders to commit to invest in partnership, and gives preference to Algerian products and firms.³ The water-services regulator was abolished in 2018,⁴ and household tariffs have not been revised since 2005.⁵

The commercial picture in Algeria: the scale of the economy and the water sector, the investment climate, and where the near-term activity is concentrated.

The bodies that commission, regulate and operate water infrastructure in Algeria. In Algeria the Ministry of Hydraulics sets policy; ADE and Sonatrach have been the off-takers for desalinated water; ADE manages potable-water systems and ONA manages sanitation; tariff rules and tariffs are set by executive decree,⁵ and the water-services regulator was abolished in 2018.⁴

• Ministry of HydraulicsMinistry
• Algérienne des Eaux (ADE)Utility
• Office National de l'Assainissement (ONA)Utility
• SEAALUtility
• AGIREBasin & resources authority
• Agence Nationale des Barrages et Transferts (ANBT)Dams & bulk transfers

The framework in Algeria is PPP law in draft (reported March 2025); 2022–25 desalination plants state-built, the schemes we track carry US$ 6.6 bn of disclosed value, none of it in projects not yet operating, and the funders most active in the sector are Sovereign budget (AfDB has financed earlier water projects, including the Koudiat Acerdoune dam).

Delivery splits by asset class across the region: dams and trunk conveyance are mostly engineering contracts carried by sovereign or development-bank finance; bulk supply increasingly uses build-operate-transfer concessions against a long-term offtake; and distribution work is let as performance-based contracts paid against measured leakage reduction. The Finance & Economics hub sets out each model and where it has been used.

The projects register gives a partial view. Of the 27 tracked schemes in Algeria, 5 name a concession or independent-producer structure in the finance note; the rest record only where the money came from, which is not the same as saying they were not concessions.

The single most important thing to know about Algerian water procurement is that the procurement law may not apply to it. Article 11 of Law 23-12 of 5 August 2023 excludes contracts concluded under delegated management of a public service and under public-private partnership from its scope; and Article 9 applies the law to state-owned economic enterprises only when they act as delegated project owner or spend state budget funds.³

Tracked schemes in Algeria, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.

28 tracked in total. The full set, filterable, is in the major projects register.

Contracts on record in Algeria, from the awards log and the major projects register, dated by commissioning where known.

12 further awards in this sector have no value recorded in our register and are not in the chart.

Repeat winners

• Befesa4 tracked awards, as developer
• Cobra / Tedagua3 tracked awards, as developer
• Codesa3 tracked awards, as developer
• Cosider3 tracked awards, as contractor
• Sacyr3 tracked awards, as developer
• FCC Aqualia2 tracked awards, as developer

Structured procurements and live tenders in Algeria, drawn from the same review that maintains the pipeline tracker.

Pipeline & awards

Tenders

What households pay

DZD 6.30/m³ for the first quarterly tranche of 25 m³ in the Algiers, Oran and Constantine zones, excluding tax, rising through multipliers to DZD 40.95 above 82 m³. Among the lowest tariffs in the region and far below the cost of the desalinated supply now entering the system. The schedule has not been revised since it took effect in 2005. The decree sets dinar rates only; the dollar figure is converted at DZD 131.6 per US$ (World Bank official exchange rate, 2025 average).

Residential tariffs, and the cost of supply where a utility publishes it, are kept in one place for the whole region so the comparison holds: a tariff means little without the cost it is measured against.

What has actually moved in Algeria, dated, from the monthly briefings. Each item names the edition it came from.

• September 2026The minister asked for faster delivery of a 23 billion dinar emergency drinking-water programme launched in mid-August.From the October 2026 briefing

The full editions are in the briefing archive.