Algeria wants to build real computing power for artificial intelligence, and it is counting on China to get there. On Monday, 9 November, Higher Education and Scientific Research Minister Kamel Baddari received a Chinese delegation in Algiers to discuss building a data centre dedicated to AI. The facility is due to be housed at the National Higher School of Artificial Intelligence (ENSIA), in the Sidi Abdellah science and technology hub.
The talks covered the practical side of the project: equipment, infrastructure and timetable, as well as environmental and regulatory constraints. The ministry’s statement described it as a qualitative step towards strengthening national high-performance computing capacity and making Algeria a regional AI hub, through partnerships built on technology transfer. Several questions remain open, however. Neither the Chinese company involved, nor the size of the investment, nor the launch date has been made public.
The stakes reach well beyond Algeria. According to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the continent hosts less than 1% of the world’s data centres. This shortfall weighs heavily on African countries’ ability to train and run their own AI models. As a result, they remain dependent on servers abroad to store and process their data.
The Sidi Abdellah project does not start from scratch. In July 2025, ENSIA had already unveiled a first data centre equipped with Nvidia H100, L40S and A40 graphics processors. That same year, Djillali Liabès University in Sidi Bel Abbès opened a high-performance computing platform to researchers and students, while in Oran the foundation stone of an advanced data centre had been laid as early as March 2025.
This new step reflects a stated ambition. On 19 October, the ministry unveiled a national roadmap to 2030 that provides for public and private funding to acquire graphics processors, strengthen research infrastructure and attract scientists, including from the diaspora. The future centre is meant to serve research, but also industry, agriculture and financial services.
The choice of Beijing is no surprise. The two countries have had a comprehensive strategic partnership since 2014 and have signed a string of digital agreements in recent years, from a joint AI laboratory set up in 2023 to a 2024 deal with Huawei for the first national data centre. Some analysts, however, question China’s growing influence over such sensitive infrastructure. For Algiers, the priority remains to close the gap, and to do so quickly.