Bejaia Forest-Fire Resilience Pilot — Algeria's AI-Camera and Drone Early-Warning System Under a New Disaster-Risk Law

After Algeria's catastrophic August 2021 wildfires, which killed more than 100 people and caused over US$124 million in damage, the government adopted a new Forestry Law in 2023 and a Law on Disaster Risk Management in 2024, followed by a July 2024 decree reorganising how fire prevention and suppression are coordinated across the country's roughly 4.1 million hectares of forest (68% Aleppo pine, 21% cork oak), which lose an average of 35,000 hectares to fire every year.

The pilot is intended as the template for a nationwide investment plan now under development by the General Directorate of Forests and the National Delegation for Major Risks.

With support from the World Bank's multi-donor PROGREEN trust fund, a pilot early-warning and rapid-response system was deployed in Bejaia, Algeria's second most fire-affected province, where 5,300 fires burned more than 144,000 hectares between 1985 and 2022. The pilot combines AI-assisted high-resolution cameras and drones for hotspot detection with new access roads and water points.

Algerian officials and state media describe the 2024 and 2025 fire seasons as markedly less damaging, but the World Bank's own account of the pilot, published in 2026, does not itself report a quantified before/after reduction in area burned for Bejaia.

The on-the-ground ecological and fire-suppression impact of the technology deployment specifically remains to be independently confirmed, even as the legal and institutional groundwork is real and citable.