The protein system
Four states and one disputed territory, 104.6 million people. Weighted by protein consumption, population multiplied by per-capita protein supply, Algeria accounts for about 44 per cent of the region, Morocco 37, Tunisia 13 and Libya 6,[9][13] so Algeria and Morocco together determine four-fifths of the score.
Protein availability is adequate everywhere: Tunisia 105.1 grams per person per day, Morocco 98.1, Algeria 93.6 and Libya 86.5, against a world average of 92.2,[9] for a population-weighted regional figure of 96.1 grams. No member is undernourished in aggregate, which distinguishes this region sharply from the Sahel or the non-GCC Middle East.
What supplies those grams is the problem. Wheat is the dietary core to an unusual degree: Moroccans consume 288 kg a year[3] and Algerians about 110 kg of bread, reported as the world's second highest.[1] In MY2026/27, the best harvest year since 2019, the four states produce roughly 10.8 million tonnes of wheat against 26.7 million tonnes of consumption, so 63 per cent of the staple is imported.[1][2][4][8] Algeria's cereal import requirement alone is 14.5 million tonnes and Libya's 3.3 million.[5][8] Across the wider region including Egypt, total wheat imports are forecast to fall from 33.3 to 29.0 million tonnes in MY2026/27, a 12.9 per cent decline, as the same run of improved harvests plays out at scale.[23]
The animal protein is poultry, eggs, dairy and, in Morocco and Tunisia, fish. Almost none of the grain behind the poultry and dairy is grown locally: Algeria imports 4.5 to 5 million tonnes of maize and 1.6 million tonnes of soybeans essentially all for feed,[1][5] Morocco's 5.1 million tonne compound feed industry runs on raw materials about 93 per cent imported,[36] and Algeria is the world's third largest milk powder importer.[29] Where the region genuinely produces protein is the sea. Morocco landed 1,132,801 tonnes from its coastal and artisanal fleets in 2025, the largest catch in Africa, worth MAD 10.11 billion.[15] Fish supply is 16.7 kg per person in Morocco, 15.9 in Tunisia and 12.9 in Libya, against 2.75 kg in Algeria, which has a long Mediterranean coast and barely uses it.[10]
Durable domestic capacity: 34
Quantitative score 38, adjusted down 4 points
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 MY2026/27 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 spans almost the whole possible range. Morocco covers 64 per cent of wheat consumption in 2026/27 and 26 per cent two years earlier,[2] Tunisia 40 per cent,[4] Algeria 25 per cent despite two million hectares of wheat and one million of barley, because only about 10 per cent of its cereal land is irrigated,[1] and Libya about 4 per cent of all cereals on a 2026 crop of 150,000 tonnes.[8]
The domestic animal protein is real. 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.
We applied a downward adjustment of four points, because the 2026 figures flatter the region and the base beneath them 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 rather than representative.[5][6] The herd that 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 nominal capacity is degraded further by a grid that failed twice in July 2026, cutting water to agricultural projects.[34]
Resource headroom: 39
Quantitative score 33, adjusted up 6 points
Water is the ceiling. Renewable internal freshwater runs at 777 cubic metres per person a year in Morocco, 346 in Tunisia, 247 in Algeria and 97 in Libya.[11] Three of the four sit at or below the 500 cubic metre absolute-scarcity threshold, and the population-weighted regional figure is about 437. Agriculture already absorbs 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 hectares of farmland is rain-fed,[21] which is the arithmetic behind the threefold swing in output, and Moroccan renewable water per person has fallen from over 2,500 cubic metres in the 1960s to about 620.[21]
Two features offset this. Animal protein here is concentrated in poultry, eggs and small pelagic fish rather than ruminants, a far more efficient conversion of feed into protein than a beef-heavy diet. And the region holds land in reserve where Egypt and the Gulf do not: Algeria has allocated about 460,000 hectares in the southern wilayas since 2020, with more than a million targeted by 2028.[1]
Cropland and arable land have grown only marginally in absolute terms since 2000: Algeria's cropland is up 4 per cent and Morocco's down 11 per cent on FAOSTAT's own Land Use series, while population rose across every member.[54][58] Cropland per person fell 26.8 per cent regionally between 2000 and 2019 and arable land per person fell 36.1 per cent between 2000 and 2023-24, a tightening the single-year stock figures above do not show on their own.[54][12][58] Set against that, irrigation-equipped area rose from 11.5 to 17.4 per cent of regional cropland over the same window, Algeria's more than doubling from 568,000 to 1.365 million hectares and Morocco's up 35 per cent to 1.946 million, so the water base has been expanding faster than the land it serves rather than lagging it.[54] Libya is the exception: its equipped area fell 15 per cent on a conflict-degraded network. Agricultural credit corroborates only partly: Morocco's orientation index for agricultural credit sits at 0.34 and Tunisia's at 0.56, both below the 1.00 parity line, and Algeria and Libya carry no series at all in FAOSTAT's Credit to Agriculture dataset, a coverage gap rather than a zero reading.[55]
The wild-fishmeal problem is the real weakness. FAO's CECAF working group assessed nine small pelagic stocks off Northwest Africa in 2024 and found five overexploited.[14] Sardine in zone C, covering Morocco's southern Atlantic coast and Western Sahara, moved from not fully exploited to overexploited, with 2023 catch of 491,000 tonnes against a 741,000 tonne five-year average, fishing mortality at 98 per cent of the reference level and biomass down 66 per cent on the R.V. Fridtjof Nansen index.[14] The zone A+B stock is now fully exploited.[14]
We applied an upward adjustment of six points for desalination, on the test of money committed and plant running rather than plant promised. Morocco runs 17 plants producing 350 million cubic metres a year, with four more in construction adding 567 million, including Casablanca whose first 200 million cubic metre phase is due by the end of 2026, against a 2030 target of 1.7 billion.[18] Algeria held 3.7 million cubic metres a day in late 2024 and targets 5.6 million by 2030; the 300,000 cubic metre per day Cap Blanc plant entered commercial operation on 31 May 2026, with five more of that size in build.[19][20] Algeria and Libya, 52 per cent of the regional population, generate the energy to run this themselves. Neither the credit gap nor the per-capita land trend above binds this specific credit, since Morocco's and Algeria's plants are state and utility financed rather than smallholder-credit dependent, and the rising irrigation-equipped share corroborates rather than contradicts it. What does test the discipline of the uplift is Algeria's flagship Saharan concession to the Italian group Bonifiche Ferraresi: of 36,900 hectares allocated across Ouargla and Timimoun, about 8,444 hectares were under cultivation by 2025,[56] and the adjacent Baladna dairy project draws an estimated 1.7 trillion litres over its life from the non-renewable North Western Sahara Aquifer System, the same fossil-water dependency already constraining Libya's Great Man-Made River.[57] None of that touches desalination itself, which is why the uplift stays at six rather than being withdrawn: it is capped there because desalinated water is going to municipal supply and high-value irrigation, and cannot raise the yield of rain-fed cereal land.
Import exposure: 35
Quantitative score 28, adjusted up 7 points
This is the defining weakness and the concentration is directional. USDA analysis puts the Black Sea at about 75 per cent of the North African wheat market and Russia alone at close to 50 per cent, with Libya sourcing effectively all of its wheat from Russia.[24]
Algeria is the acute case. Adding USDA Post's estimate of unreported Russian shipments to customs-reported volumes, about 83 per cent of Algerian wheat in the first eight months of MY2024/25 came from four Black Sea origins, an implied partner Herfindahl-Hirschman index near 0.23.[1] Algeria neither publishes customs statistics nor releases OAIC tender results, so this is a reconstruction rather than a disclosure. Its feed maize book is more concentrated still, at Argentina 54.9 per cent and Brazil 44.8 per cent, an index near 0.50.[1] The 2024 exclusion of French suppliers from OAIC tenders over a diplomatic dispute, which cut French volumes from 982,280 to 31,500 tonnes across comparable windows, shows how quickly politics can narrow the mix further.[1]
Morocco is the counter-example and one of the most diversified wheat buyers: France 25.1 per cent, Russia 19.0, Canada 16.5, Bulgaria 8.5, Germany 8.0, Latvia 6.1, Lithuania 5.0, Ukraine 4.7 and Romania 3.2, an index near 0.15 against Egypt's 0.44, with Black Sea origins at about 35 per cent.[2] Tunisia buys through a monopoly, the Office des Céréales, but spreads awards across French, Italian, Bulgarian and Dutch houses.[22]
We applied an upward adjustment of seven points for route geography. Every protein-critical origin reaches North African ports via the Turkish Straits, the Mediterranean or the Atlantic. Nothing in the region's grain, oilseed or milk powder supply touches Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Suez, Panama or Malacca, so through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that followed the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February 2026, which cut tanker transits by more than 90 per cent and left Gulf importers rerouting at multiples of normal cost, North African food cargoes were unaffected.[40] Morocco discharges on both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Algeria uses more than ten ports, and no member depends on a single berth. The cap at seven reflects Libya's and Algeria's residual Black Sea concentration and the fiscal weight of the bill: Morocco's food imports reached MAD 94.6 billion, USD 10.3 billion, in 2025, 11.5 per cent of all imports.[32]
Upstream dependence: 46
Quantitative score 42, adjusted up 4 points
Upstream dependence splits by input, and on one of them the region supplies the world.
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 rather than imported feedstock, precisely the vulnerability that curtailed Egyptian urea output in 2026.[27] Tunisia's Gafsa basin recovered to 3.9 million tonnes of rock in 2025.[28] Agricultural energy is sovereign for Algeria and Libya and imported by Morocco and Tunisia.
On feed the region is close to naked. 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.
We applied an upward adjustment of four points. OCP's phosphate position is structural pricing power over an input with no synthetic substitute and no second large supplier, and it is being expanded 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] The uplift is held to four because none of it touches the feed grain and oilmeal that determine animal protein output.
Access and affordability: 60
Quantitative score 64, adjusted down 4 points
Nutritional outcomes and diet affordability point in opposite directions here, and the averages hide it. Population-weighted undernourishment is 5.2 per cent and stunting 11.1 per cent, both comfortable regional figures that conceal Algeria's 2.5 per cent undernourishment and Tunisia's 8.4 per cent stunting on one side against Libya's 16.5 per cent undernourishment and Morocco's 14.2 per cent stunting on the other.[41][42] Underneath those calorie-adequate averages sits a harder number: the cost of an actual healthy diet, not merely sufficient calories, is unaffordable for 38.8 per cent of Algerians and 12.4 per cent of Moroccans against 8.6 per cent of Tunisians.[43] Libya is not covered by the underlying World Bank series, a genuine gap, though its currency down about 15 per cent and food inflation running at 13.9 per cent on the national CPI in June 2026, and at 18 per cent on FAO GIEWS's reading, make it an implausible favourable outlier.[8][47] Population-weighted across the 93 per cent of the region the data does cover, roughly a quarter of people cannot afford the diet their own food balance sheet says is available, and Algeria, at 45 per cent of the regional population, drives most of that figure on its own.
Price volatility compounds this for every member rather than easing the picture for anyone. Year-on-year food inflation has swung from a high of plus 20.8 per cent to a low of minus 3.1 per cent in Morocco, plus 17.3 to minus 7.6 in Algeria, plus 15.9 to plus 0.9 in Tunisia, and, far the most severe, plus 52.6 to minus 12.1 in Libya, a range of nearly 65 percentage points against 24 to 25 in Morocco and Algeria and 15 in Tunisia.[44][45][46][47] The Libyan series runs from 2005, the Tunisian from 2007, the Moroccan from 2009 and the Algerian from 2010, so the spans are not strictly like for like. Physical access is the one indicator that is severe in Libya alone: conflict-divided administration and the Great Man-Made River's repeated blackouts disrupt distribution to cities and farms. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia run multiple ports and paved road networks, whose material weaknesses are reach into the Atlas interior, Algeria's Saharan south and Tunisia's interior governorates.
We applied a downward adjustment of four points, for coverage. The quantitative indicators carry both halves of the story, the adequate calorie outcomes and the unaffordable healthy diet beneath them, and we found no funded policy shift or demonstrated adaptation specific to this pillar to move the score in either direction. What they do not carry is Libya. At 7.38 million of the region's 104.55 million people, roughly 7 per cent, it is absent from the World Bank series that supplies this pillar's affordability figure,[13][43] and the gap runs one way: Libya has the region's worst undernourishment at 16.5 per cent and its worst price volatility, a food CPI that has ranged from minus 12.1 to plus 52.6 per cent and stood at plus 13.9 per cent in June 2026.[41][47] A Libyan unaffordability share anywhere near or above Algeria's measured 38.8 per cent would pull the regional figure well above the 24.6 per cent the covered members show. Four points reflects that one-directional gap rather than leaving it unscored.
Shock endurance: 58
Quantitative score 54, adjusted up 4 points
Endurance is the strongest pillar and 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 import cover on 14 July 2026, down from 107 days in March.[33] Libya has no credible reserve disclosure, 18 per cent food inflation and a currency down about 15 per cent,[8] on a wheat book that is effectively single-origin.[35]
Crisis purchasing power widens the gap between members rather than closing it. Measured in months of import cover instead of nominal stock, Algeria holds 16.5 months and Libya 31.6, against Morocco's 5.3 and Tunisia's 4.5.[48] Those are World Bank figures for 2024, 2023 for Libya; Tunisia's own central bank put cover at 92 days, about three months, on 14 July 2026,[33] and we treat the more recent national figure as the live one and the World Bank series as the cross-country comparator. Market access tracks the same divide: Morocco carries an investment-grade-adjacent rating, S&P BBB- with a stable outlook as of September 2025 and Moody's Ba1 with a positive outlook as of March 2026, and can borrow through a shock; Tunisia's Moody's Caa1, affirmed February 2025, and an undated Fitch CCC- on the same source page mean it largely cannot; Algeria has not needed to test its access because hydrocarbon revenue and reserves already cover it; and Libya's divided institutions cannot reliably deploy what its balance sheet shows regardless.[49][50][51] Social protection is close to unmeasured: the World Bank's ASPIRE database holds a single observation for the whole region, Morocco in 2009, and nothing current for any member,[52] so this component is disclosed qualitatively, resting on Morocco's own reported cash-transfer and subsidy-reform programme rather than a coverage figure.[53] Crisis purchasing power scores 80, driven by Algeria's and Libya's reserve depth. The indicators put the pillar at 54.
We applied an upward adjustment of four points on two grounds. The first is demonstrated adaptation: Morocco cancelled the 2025 Eid al-Adha sacrifice, the fourth such cancellation in the country's history and the first since 1996, cutting demand on a herd that had fallen 38 per cent, paired it with duty and VAT suspensions on live sheep and red meat now extended to end-2026 and a MAD 12.8 billion package on top of roughly MAD 13.5 billion spent since 2022, restored the sacrifice in 2026 with the herd back near 40 million head, and did it without disorder.[30][31] It suspended frozen sardine exports from 1 February 2026 for the same reason.[17] The second is a terms-of-trade hedge that stock ratios cannot capture: Algeria and Libya are hydrocarbon exporters, so the energy and freight shocks that raise world grain prices raise their capacity to pay for it, and food inflation ran at 2.2 per cent in Algeria and minus 0.8 per cent in Morocco in mid-2026.[5][6] The uplift is capped at four because Tunisia's cover is falling and Libya's reserves sit behind a divided central bank and a grid that fails.
Trajectory
Two of the three levers that matter most are already funded. Desalination is the clearest: 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 real 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] Feed substitution is the second: 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]
The third is supplier diversification, where the direction of travel is wrong. The region moved towards the Black Sea between 2022 and 2025 because Black Sea wheat was cheap, and only Morocco has an origin mix that would survive a Turkish Straits closure. Holding non-Black Sea share above a floor, which Morocco has achieved in effect and Algeria has not, is the cheapest available improvement to this picture.
Two things could make this picture worse. The fishery is the more likely: if zone C sardine biomass continues its decline since 2021, Morocco loses its cheapest domestic animal protein alongside the export earnings that pay for wheat, and the Court of Justice of the European Union's October 2024 annulment of the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement for want of Western Saharan consent removes both access payments and legal certainty.[14][38] The second is Libya, where a fragmented state, a failing grid and a single wheat supplier make a food emergency a question of when.
Country notes
Morocco. The region's linchpin and the widest swing. Wheat self-sufficiency moved from 26 per cent in MY2024/25 to 64 per cent in MY2026/27, with imports falling from 7.0 to 5.0 million tonnes, on the most diversified wheat book of any importer in the region.[2] It lands Africa's largest catch and through OCP controls roughly 68 per cent of world phosphate reserves.[15][39] The constraints are water at about 620 cubic metres per person, a herd that fell 38 per cent, and a MAD 94.6 billion food import bill.[21][30][32]
Algeria. The largest member and the deepest buffer. It grows about 25 per cent of its wheat and imports 8.5 to 9.2 million tonnes plus 5 million tonnes of feed maize against a 14.5 million tonne cereal requirement.[1][5] Roughly 83 per cent of that wheat comes from four Black Sea origins and its maize book sits near an index of 0.50 on two suppliers.[1] Against that it holds six and a half months of wheat, is nearly doubling state storage, and holds USD 72.5 billion of hydrocarbon-earned reserves.[1][13] Its fish intake of 2.75 kg per person is its largest unused substitution option.[10]
Tunisia. The member with the least fiscal room. It grows about 40 per cent of its wheat and imports 1.85 million tonnes through the Office des Céréales, sold at a subsidised price the budget carries.[4][22] Its 18.2 per cent arable share is the region's highest and its 2025 and 2026 harvests were well above average,[7][12] but storage falls about 300,000 tonnes short of need[22] and reserves cover 92 days of imports.[33] Gafsa phosphate recovering to 3.9 million tonnes in 2025 is the one upstream bright spot.[28]
Libya. The weakest member on every pillar except nominal reserves. A 2026 cereal crop of 150,000 tonnes stands against 3.3 million tonnes of import requirement, so about 96 per cent of cereal supply is bought abroad, and USDA puts Russia at effectively 100 per cent of its wheat.[8][24] Food inflation ran at 18 per cent with the dinar down about 15 per cent.[8] The USD 104.7 billion on the books sits behind a divided central bank,[13] and the Great Man-Made River lost power twice in July 2026.[34]
Western Sahara. Not separately scored and not separately measurable, with no food balance sheet and a population on the order of 600,000. Its weight sits in the Bou Craa phosphate deposit, counted within Moroccan totals,[25] and the CECAF zone C sardine fishery off Dakhla, assessed as overexploited in 2024.[14] Its legal status is a live constraint on fisheries income, the Court of Justice of the European Union having annulled the EU-Morocco fisheries agreement on 4 October 2024 for want of the territory's consent.[38]