(Ecofin Agency) - Secretary General of Algerian Ministry of Agriculture, Kamel Chadi, and China’s Ambassador to Algeria, Yang Guangyu, signed on September 15, 2016, in Algiers, a memorandum of understanding for the second stage of pilot project for the management of saline agricultural lands in the Hmadnas (Relizane) region, TsaAlgérie reported.

Exploiting Algeria’s saline lands is crucial for the sector’s development considering their relatively important size – more than 600,000 hectares across the territory, of which 18,000 hectares in Relizane. “This project is of strategic interest for Algeria whose agricultural lands, over the past decades, have become more saline, especially in the arid and semi-arid regions. If not taken care of, this phenomenon [salinization] could render affected soils definitively infertile, thus causing these lands to be lost in the medium-term,” the Ministry said in the statement.  

Algeria’s government wants China to put its expertise at the service of local farmers. “Scientific research must be used to determine technical solutions which will be later disseminated to farmers in the affected areas. Results from experimentations are encouraging so tests must go on in the second stage (201662018) with the help of Chinese expertise,” the statement said.

After the project’s initial stage which began in 2012 via a partnership with Algeria’s National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAA) and China Agriculture International Development, this second stage should focus on the dissemination of successful techniques for managing saline lands.

Souha Touré