Algiers: Facts about Algeria, Africa’s largest country, where Thursday’s presidential election is expected to return the ailing Abdul Aziz Bouteflika for a fourth term.

GEOGRAPHY: The biggest country in Africa, since Sudan split in two, covers 2.38 million square kilometres, with a Mediterranean coastline some 1,000 kilometres long.

POPULATION: 38.48 million. Three quarters of the population is younger than 35 years old.

RECENT HISTORY: Algeria became a French colony in 1830, after three centuries of Turkish domination. Independence came in July 1962 after more than seven years of war.

The National Liberation Front (FLN) declared Algeria a socialist state, but in-fighting soon erupted. In July 1965, FLN chief of staff General Houari Boumedienne overthrew founding president Ahmad Bin Bella and kept Algeria a one-party state until he died in 1978.

In February 1979, Colonel Shadli Bendjedid was elected head of state. He was forced to resign in January 1992 after the military stepped in to stop the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) from winning Algeria’s first multi-party legislative polls and setting up an Islamic state, sparking a civil war that claimed some 200,000 lives.

General Liamine Zeroual was appointed head of state in January 1994. He then won a multi-party election to keep the job in November 1995 and pursued a policy of liberalising the economy. He announced in September 1998 that he was cutting short his mandate.

His successor Bouteflika stood alone in 1999 after all six other contenders pulled out charging fraud. He launched a reconciliation programme that saw thousands of Islamic fighters lay down their arms but failed to contain the insurgency completely.

In 2005, a Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation was adopted in a referendum aimed at ending political violence.

Despite a decrease in violence, attacks blamed on Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) continue.

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: The Algerian Republic which installed multi-party rule in 1989 is presided over by Bouteflika who was first elected in April 1999, and re-elected in 2004 and 2009.

On May 10, 2012, the FLN, from which Bouteflika hails, widely won legislative elections, as moderate Islamist parties registered losses.

ECONOMY: Algeria began liberalising its state-controlled economy, which is almost entirely dependent on oil and gas exports, in 1994.

Algeria’s youth has borne the brunt of unemployment, with 21.5 per cent of under 35s without a job, according to the IMF, against less than 10 per cent for the overall population.

PER CAPITA GDP: $5,020 dollars (2012 - World Bank).