Algiersculture & etiquette

The sequence is fixed and it is the thing people get wrong. Your employer obtains a provisional work authorisation from the employment services; a consulate abroad then issues a work visa on the strength of it, along with an employer attestation guaranteeing your repatriation costs; you enter; and only then does the wilaya issue a carte de résident. You cannot arrive on a business or tourist visa and regularise from inside the country. The permit itself cannot exceed two years under loi 81-10 and is renewable.

Salaries earned in Algeria by foreign workers are transferred abroad under a specific Banque d'Algérie mechanism in which the pay is split into a transferable portion and a portion payable in dinars — and that split is contractual, agreed between employer and employee. Whatever proportion you agree at signature is the proportion of your earnings that can ever leave the country. People negotiate hard on the headline number and accept the split as a formality. It is not a formality; it is the number that matters.

Residential leases in Algiers are commonly for one year with the entire year's rent payable up front, plus a deposit. That is a large single outlay in a currency you cannot bring in freely or take back out, and it is the main reason expatriate housing here is usually arranged and paid by the employer rather than by the individual. If you are arranging it yourself, ask about the payment terms in the first conversation, not the last.

Article 467 bis of the Algerian Civil Code, as amended, requires lease contracts to be concluded in writing with a certain date, on pain of nullity — and in practice this means a notarised contract. An informal arrangement is not a weak contract, it is not a contract at all, and a tenant under one has no rights to enforce. This is unusually strict by regional standards and it is worth insisting on properly even when a landlord suggests otherwise.

The dinar is not convertible and the Banque d'Algérie sets the official rate. A substantial parallel market exists — the Square Port-Saïd in Algiers is its best-known location — and trades at a materially weaker rate than the official one. Using it is illegal. The practical consequence for a newcomer is simply that a foreign-currency salary converted through the banking system at the official rate buys considerably less in Algiers than the headline figure suggests, and you should model your cost of living on that basis rather than on an unofficial rate you have read about.

Arabic is the national language and Tamazight is official; French remains pervasive in business, engineering, banking and higher administration, and much of the professional class is genuinely bilingual. English is growing among younger professionals and in the hydrocarbon sector but is not a substitute. If you have French, you will function. If you have neither French nor Arabic, working life in Algiers is materially harder than in Tunis or Casablanca.