In 1830 France declared Arabic a foreign language in Algeria and began the systematic replacement of Arabic-medium education with French. The goal, as documented in Maurice Wahl's 1897 account, was to "gradually replace Arabic by French" and sever the Islamic scholarly tradition. By independence in 1962, the policy had produced near-total illiteracy in the indigenous population.

After independence, Algeria rebuilt its education system with Arabic as the language of instruction. The Arabisation policy, progressively implemented from the 1970s onward, replaced French at each level of schooling. Today Arabic and Tamazight are the official languages. The act of writing in Arabic in an Algerian classroom is documented proof that the policy of erasure did not succeed. Algeria Connect, 2025.

At independence in 1962, illiteracy exceeded 85 percent of the Algerian population and fewer than 750,000 children attended primary school. The Project on Middle East Political Science documented that "less than a third of Algerian children actually attended school" at independence, citing Benrabah 2007 and Heggoy 1973.

Today Algeria has approximately 11 million pupils in primary and secondary education. The primary net enrolment rate reached 97 percent in recent years, meeting international standards. The government invested heavily in education from independence: by 1990 the education sector received approximately 29.7 percent of the state budget. Algeria Connect, 2025.

France targeted Arabic literacy specifically to sever the Islamic scholarly tradition and break the intergenerational transmission of Algerian cultural identity. The Code de l'Indigenat, the Warnier Law, and the systematic closure of Quranic schools and medersas were all instruments of this policy, documented in the earlier episodes of this series.

Algerian authors writing in Arabic, French and Tamazight have produced a documented literary tradition since independence. Writers including Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar, Tahar Djaout and Mohammed Dib created a body of work that engaged directly with the experience of colonisation and its aftermath. The tradition did not begin with independence. It survived colonisation underground, in oral form, in religious institutions France could not fully close, and emerged into publication after 1962.

At independence in 1962, Algeria had 3 universities enrolling fewer than 2,000 students, overwhelmingly from the French settler population. Today Algeria has approximately 130 higher education institutions. Between 1.5 and 1.7 million students are enrolled. Gross tertiary enrolment exceeds 50 percent, meaning more than half of college-age Algerians are in some form of post-secondary education. Algeria Connect, 2025.

Women make up a documented majority of Algerian university students. According to figures cited by the New York Times, women make up 70 percent of Algeria's lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. This is a documented reversal of the situation at independence, produced by a sustained national investment in education that Algeria built from almost nothing in 1962.

The bulk of Algeria's colonial-era administrative and military archives are held in France, including at the Archives nationales d'outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence. Algeria has formally and repeatedly demanded their return. France has returned some documents on a selective basis but has not transferred the full archive.

The National Archives of Algeria have continued to document, recover and publish the historical record using sources available within Algeria itself, including family archives, oral history, photographic records and documents held by other countries. The Algerian state has invested in historical documentation as part of its national identity project since independence. The history France tried to erase is being written from the inside.