The protein system
The region has 104.6 million people across four states and Western Sahara; Algeria and Morocco account for about four-fifths of protein supply.[9, 13] Average protein supply exceeds the reference requirement in each state, ranging from 86.5 grams per person per day in Libya to 105.1 in Tunisia.[9] These national averages do not show how food is distributed within households.
Wheat is the central exposure. If current forecasts hold, the four states will produce about 10.8 million tonnes in 2026/27 against 26.7 million tonnes of use, leaving imports to cover roughly 63 per cent.[1, 2, 4, 8] Animal protein comes chiefly from poultry, eggs, dairy and fish. Feed dependence is high in Algeria and Morocco, where imported ingredients supply nearly all maize and soy feed and about 93 per cent of compound-feed inputs respectively.[1, 5, 36] Morocco's fisheries provide a stronger domestic source: its fleet landed 1.13 million tonnes in 2025, Africa's largest catch.[15]
Durable domestic capacity:
Unlike Egypt or the Gulf, this region has land. Arable area runs at 0.16 to 0.24 hectares per person, six to nine times Egypt's 0.027, and reaches 18.2 per cent of Tunisia's territory and 15.4 per cent of Morocco's.[12] The constraint is yield on rain-fed ground: Morocco's wheat yield of 2.32 tonnes per hectare follows 1.12 in MY2024/25,[2] and Algeria's runs at 1.45.[1]
Self-sufficiency therefore varies widely. USDA forecasts that Morocco will cover 64 per cent of wheat use in 2026/27, compared with 26 per cent in 2024/25.[2] The forecast is 40 per cent for Tunisia[4] and 25 per cent for Algeria, despite two million hectares of wheat and one million of barley; only about 10 per cent of Algeria's cereal land is irrigated.[1] Libya is forecast to cover about 4 per cent of all cereal use, with a 2026 crop of 150,000 tonnes.[8]
Domestic animal protein is produced at scale. Morocco's modern poultry sector took meat output from 55,000 tonnes in 1981 to 625,000 tonnes in 2021 and eggs from 278 million to 5.5 billion, covering national demand,[36, 37] and the same pattern holds in Algeria.
The 2026 figures flatter a production base that is eroding on three fronts. FAO records Algeria's 2026 harvest as the largest since 2019 and Morocco's as 16 per cent above the five-year average, so these ratios are near a decade high.[5, 6] Morocco's herd, which supplies red meat, fell 38 per cent between the last census and February 2025, forcing the King to cancel the Eid al-Adha sacrifice, the fourth such cancellation in the country's history and the first since 1996.[30] The small pelagic fishery that supplies Morocco's cheapest animal protein is now formally overexploited in the zone producing most of the catch,[14] with FAO recording a 34 per cent fall in regional sardine stocks over four years.[16] Libya's farms are also hit by a grid that failed twice in July 2026, cutting water to agricultural projects.[34]
Resource headroom:
Water and rain-fed harvests limit the region more than land. Renewable freshwater ranges from 777 cubic metres per person a year in Morocco to 97 in Libya; Algeria has 247 and Tunisia 346.[11] Three members are at or below the 500-cubic-metre absolute-scarcity threshold. Agriculture uses more than 80 per cent of available water in Morocco and about 70 per cent in Algeria.[19, 21] Nearly 6 million of Morocco's 8.7 million farmland hectares depend on rain, helping explain the sharp swings in wheat output.[21]
Land per person is falling, even as irrigation infrastructure expands. Cropland per person fell 26.8 per cent regionally from 2000 to 2019 and arable land per person fell 36.1 per cent by 2023-24. Over a similar period, irrigation-equipped land rose from 11.5 to 17.4 per cent of cropland, with growth in Algeria and Morocco; Libya's equipped area fell 15 per cent amid conflict-related damage.[12, 54, 58] In Morocco and Tunisia, farms get less bank lending than their share of the economy.[55]
Desalination is expanding, but its reach is limited. Morocco's 17 plants produce 350 million cubic metres a year, with projects under way towards its 1.7-billion-cubic-metre 2030 target.[18] Algeria produced 3.7 million cubic metres a day in late 2024 and aims for 5.6 million by 2030.[19, 20] These supplies support cities and high-value irrigation rather than rain-fed cereal yields. In the Sahara, only about 8,444 of 36,900 hectares allocated to a major farm project were under cultivation by 2025; a linked dairy plan also depends on non-renewable aquifer water.[56, 57]
The fishmeal base faces a separate limit. FAO found five of nine small-pelagic stocks off Northwest Africa overexploited in 2024. Sardine biomass in Morocco's southern Atlantic zone had fallen 66 per cent from its survey baseline.[14]
Import exposure:
Supplier concentration is the central trade risk. USDA estimates the Black Sea supplies about 75 per cent of North African wheat and Russia close to half; Libya buys effectively all its wheat from Russia.[24]
Algeria is the acute case. French wheat deliveries fell from 982,280 tonnes in the first eight months of MY2023/24 to 31,500 tonnes in the same period of MY2024/25.[1] Its feed-maize imports are concentrated between Argentina and Brazil.[1] Morocco's wheat suppliers are more diverse, with France, Russia, Canada and several European and Black Sea origins sharing the market; Tunisia also spreads purchases across several suppliers through its state grain board.[2, 22]
North African ports avoid the Gulf's Hormuz chokepoint. Morocco unloads on both the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Algeria uses multiple ports, and the region's major suppliers reach it over Mediterranean or Atlantic routes. The 2026 Hormuz closure therefore disrupted Gulf deliveries without directly interrupting North African food cargoes.[40] Libya and Algeria remain exposed to Black Sea concentration, while Morocco's food import bill reached MAD 94.6 billion in 2025, 11.5 per cent of all imports.[32]
Upstream dependence:
The region produces phosphate and some nitrogen fertiliser, but imports much of the feed its livestock consume.
Morocco holds 50 billion tonnes of phosphate rock, about 68 per cent of a world total of 73 billion tonnes, and produced an estimated 35.3 million tonnes of rock in 2024, revised up sharply from an earlier 30 million tonne estimate.[39] Algeria's Sorfert complex at Arzew is among the largest integrated nitrogen producers in North Africa and runs on domestic gas, avoiding the imported-feedstock exposure that curtailed Egyptian urea output in 2026.[27] Tunisia's Gafsa basin recovered to 3.9 million tonnes of rock in 2025.[28] Algeria and Libya produce the energy their farms use; Morocco and Tunisia import it.
Feed dependence remains high. Algeria's barley feed use of 1.55 million tonnes exceeds domestic production of 1.2 million even in a normal year, on top of 4.5 to 5 million tonnes of imported maize and 1.6 million tonnes of soybeans.[1] Morocco's feed raw materials are about 93 per cent imported[36] and its barley imports swing from 0.9 to 0.5 million tonnes with the state of the pasture.[2] Poultry breeding stock is imported throughout, and potash entirely.
OCP holds the largest share of the world's phosphate reserves, an input with no synthetic substitute, and is expanding output with committed money: about 12 million tonnes of fertiliser output in 2024 against a 20 million tonne target for end-2027, USD 5.25 billion of capital expenditure earmarked for 2026, and USD 1.5 billion raised through a first international hybrid bond in April 2026.[26] Phosphate strength does little to reduce reliance on the imported grain and oilmeal that sustain livestock output.
Access and affordability:
Diet affordability is weak despite adequate average protein supply. Healthy diets were unaffordable for 38.8 per cent of Algerians, 12.4 per cent of Moroccans and 8.6 per cent of Tunisians.[43] and vary sharply. Libya has the region's highest undernourishment rate at 16.5 per cent, while stunting is 14.2 per cent in Morocco and 8.4 per cent in Tunisia.[41, 42] Libya accounts for about 7 per cent of the region's population,[13] and it also has the highest food inflation.[8, 47]
Conflict-divided administration and recurring blackouts on Libya's Great Man-Made River disrupt supply to farms and cities. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have multiple ports and paved-road networks, though remote inland areas remain harder to reach.
State cereal boards and subsidy funds soften the effect of world prices. Tunisia has held the retail price of a 400-gram loaf at TND 0.230 and semolina at TND 0.450 per kilogram from 2021 through January 2026.[63] Across the 2021-22 world-price rise, local food-price indices moved less than world prices, with the response smallest in Libya and strongest in Algeria.[60, 61, 62] Tunisian chicken and beef prices each rose about 8 per cent, against a 22.3 per cent rise in the FAO meat index.[63]
Price controls did not reverse later increases. From March 2022 to March 2026, food prices rose 19.7 per cent in Algeria, 20.7 per cent in Morocco, 46.8 per cent in Tunisia and 27.9 per cent in Libya, even as the FAO index fell 19.7 per cent.[60, 61] Libya's retail chicken price rose from LYD 11.39 per kilogram in 2021 to LYD 32.10 in May 2026.[62, 63] At Algeria's DZD 24,000 monthly minimum wage, a kilogram of chicken cost 2.8 hours of work and thirty eggs 3.2 hours in May 2026; a kilogram of beef cost 14 hours.[63, 64]
Shock endurance:
Reserve and financing capacity is unevenly distributed.
Algeria holds one of the deepest grain buffers in the region: wheat ending stocks of 6.4 million tonnes against 11.95 million of consumption, a stocks-to-use ratio of 54 per cent or about six and a half months, with state storage moving from 5 to 9 million tonnes under a 30-silo, 350-centre programme decreed in August 2024.[1] Reserves are substantial in three of four members: Libya USD 104.7 billion, Algeria USD 72.5 billion and Morocco USD 48.5 billion in 2025.[13]
The weaknesses are specific. Morocco's buffer is thin and pro-cyclical, at 2.8 months after a bumper harvest and under four weeks after the 2024 drought.[2] Tunisia holds about 3.4 months on paper but only 508,000 tonnes of storage against a roughly 300,000 tonne shortfall,[4, 22] and its reserves stood at USD 7.98 billion and 92 days of on 14 July 2026, down from 107 days in March.[33] Libya has 18 per cent food inflation and a currency down about 15 per cent,[8] on a wheat book that is effectively single-origin.[35]
The ability to pay for imports in a crisis also varies widely. World Bank figures show import cover of 16.5 months in Algeria and 31.6 in Libya, against 5.3 in Morocco and 4.5 in Tunisia.[48] Morocco retains market access: S&P rated it BBB- with a stable outlook in September 2025, and Moody's Ba1 with a positive outlook in March 2026.[49, 50] Tunisia's Moody's Caa1 rating, affirmed in February 2025, points to much narrower borrowing options.[51] Algeria can draw on hydrocarbon revenue and reserves, while Libya's divided institutions constrain its ability to deploy resources. Morocco's cash-transfer and subsidy-reform programme offers some support to households.[53] Algeria's and Libya's deep reserves dominate the regional picture.
Morocco's government responded to herd losses by cancelling the 2025 Eid al-Adha sacrifice and suspending frozen sardine exports from February 2026; it restored the sacrifice in 2026 as the herd began to rebuild.[17, 30, 31] Algeria and Libya can draw on hydrocarbon revenues when energy prices rise alongside food and freight costs. Mid-2026 food inflation was 2.2 per cent in Algeria and -0.8 per cent in Morocco.[5, 6] Tunisia's falling reserve cover and Libya's divided institutions and failing grid limit the region's ability to turn financial resources into reliable supply. Regional protein supply is 96.1 grams per person per day, about two-thirds above the reference requirement.
Trajectory
Desalination and feed substitution are already funded. If Morocco reaches 1.7 billion cubic metres by 2030 and Algeria 5.6 million cubic metres a day, the municipal water freed would allow a material expansion of irrigated area, the only route out of rainfall dependence,[18, 19] though USDA judges progress on Algeria's 1.3 to 2 million hectare irrigation expansion to be slow.[1] Import substitution follows the same pattern: Baladna's USD 3.5 billion Adrar project, in construction from early 2026 with first output due late 2027 and about 100,000 tonnes a year of milk powder at capacity, would displace roughly half of Algeria's milk powder imports.[29]
Supplier diversification is the exception. Only Morocco has a wheat supplier mix that could withstand a Turkish Straits closure; Algeria could reduce its exposure by buying more from other origins.
The picture could still worsen. Sardine decline could remove Morocco's cheapest domestic animal protein and reduce export earnings used to pay for wheat. The Court of Justice of the European Union also annulled the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement in October 2024 because it lacked Western Saharan consent, reducing access payments and legal certainty.[14, 38] Libya is the other risk, where a fragmented state, a failing grid and a single wheat supplier make a food emergency a real risk.
Country notes
Morocco. The region's largest fishery and phosphate holder also has the sharpest wheat swings: domestic harvest covered 26 per cent of use in MY2024/25, with USDA forecasting 64 per cent in MY2026/27.[2, 15, 39] Water scarcity and a depleted herd remain constraints.[21, 30]
Algeria. The largest member combines high import dependence with six and a half months of wheat stocks and USD 72.5 billion in reserves.[1, 13] Its fish supply, 2.75 kilograms per person a year, is the region's lowest despite its Mediterranean coast.[10]
Tunisia. The region's highest arable share and strong 2025-26 harvests support production, but wheat imports are managed through a state board and storage remains about 300,000 tonnes short.[4, 7, 12, 22]
Libya. Domestic cereal production covers only a small share of needs, while Russian suppliers dominate wheat imports. Its reported USD 104.7 billion in reserves sits behind divided institutions, high food inflation and recurring electricity failures.[8, 13, 24, 34]
Western Sahara. The territory contains the Bou Craa phosphate deposit, included in Moroccan reserve and production totals, and sardine stocks off Dakhla are assessed as overexploited. Its status constrained the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement.[14, 25, 38]