Algeria’s Women Climate Leaders Built a Movement—Now U.S. Funding Cuts Put It at Risk

An unmarked garage in suburban Algiers. A mountainside greenhouse full of fly larvae.  A kitchen doubling as a soap factory on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. Across Algeria, the birthplace of countless sustainability ventures come in many forms — and they are increasingly led by women.

Ibtissam Touhami, Lyna Mezhoud, and Thiziri Idir are three of those women. In their own way, each has viewed sustainability as both an environmental necessity and a means of economic empowerment for themselves and their communities.

Their efforts have been bolstered by the Women’s Economic Empowerment program (WE2) — a $1.2 million initiative launched by World Learning Algeria, an educational development nonprofit and the only American NGO operating in the country. Since October 2023, the program has supported 800 women in eight communities nationwide in developing green businesses and securing highly skilled employment. 

But the program’s future remains at the mercy of U.S. funding, which has been in an operational riptide since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January and committed to eliminating more than 90 percent of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. development and humanitarian assistance around the world.

A temporary freeze in federal funding, ordered by the Trump administration in January, halted activities of organizations like World Learning for several weeks. Although partial funding was reinstated for WE2 in late March, many programs remain in a precarious state globally, underscoring the cruciality of stable and reliable funding provided by the U.S. to these programs.

In FY 24, the United States obligated $12 billion from various appropriations years in the Middle East and North Africa — including $3.5 million to Algeria, paling in comparison to Israel, which received $6.8 billion, and Jordan, which received $1.8 billion, according to the U.S. government’s foreign aid website.

Despite these hurdles, Algerian women remain committed to sustainable entrepreneurship.

Thiziri Idir says it’s her “duty to act before it’s too late” to save Algerians from the effects of climate change. To do her part, she and her team of volunteer engineers farm black soldier flies in her hometown of Bejaia, a port city in the mountainous coastal region of Kabylie around 200 km west of Algiers. The flies are then sold as chicken feed to farmers in the region as a sustainable, low-cost protein source for chickens.

Through WE2, Idir has been able to connect with other women in and around Bejaia — many of whom are housewives making some money from their sustainable small businesses but who are not classified as entrepreneurs by society, Idir said.

“You can find a housewife farming chickens; she is an entrepreneur in her own way. You can find a housewife making great handmade things in her home; she is an entrepreneur in her own way,” Idir said. “But as a society, we don’t call them entrepreneurs.”

Idir said she was saddened when WE2 was initially shut down because it was the first real sustainability project brought to her community.

“It’s like a real project this time,” Idir said. “Many people love the team and trust us a lot with what we are doing. Having a real project to address real problems is great.”

Idir said she’s noticed a societal divorce from some “very sustainable” Algerian traditions of embracing the land. “For Algeria, I feel like j’ai mal coeur,” Idir said, meaning ‘my heart hurts.”

But as her efforts have gained traction in and around Bejaia, she has received a positive response from older farmers who tell her they also used to feed their chickens insects to produce high-quality eggs.

Like Idir, Lyna Mezhoud said sustainability in Algeria means using the traditions of the past to improve the present. In an unassuming garage-turned-studio in the capital city of Algiers, 26-year-old Mezhoud joins her mother and a team of six other women from around the neighborhood to spend their days sewing and packaging sustainable clothing for her brand Anyl M.

Each day, Mezhoud’s mother sits in front of a sewing machine passed down from her own mother. The tradition of sewing, she said, is integral to making traditional Algerian clothing.

“It’s important for me that we keep this,” Mezhoud said. “Why should we go and buy from international brands? Let’s preserve our culture.”

Anyl M tackles what Mezhoud sees as the two main sustainability issues in fashion in Algeria — scraps and dead stocks. To combat dead stocks or outdated clothes that likely won’t sell, Mezhoud’s company is “make to order” rather than “make to stock” like other fast fashion brands. She also makes other garments from recycled trimmings from her designs so the fabric doesn’t go to waste.

Mezhoud said while she feels that women are respected in Algerian society in general, they have to work doubly as hard as men to be respected in the workplace.

“In the workplace, men always feel like they are superior to women,” Mezhoud said. “For us women, we have to impose ourselves.”

In Algeria, women increasingly outperform men in education, making up nearly 65 percent of university graduates. But they compose less than 15 percent of the workforce, according to statistics compiled by World Learning Algeria.

While stats about female entrepreneurship in Algeria vary, an association of Algerian women entrepreneurs, SEVE, found women in business is a rising trend that increased by 25 percent from 2013 to 2018. The Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2021 global ranking ranked Algeria as 60th out of 65 countries measured and found they made up 7.4 percent of total business leaders in the country.

Mezhoud said while it can be challenging for female entrepreneurs in Algiers, it is “way harder” in other regions near the middle of the country and the Sahara Desert.

“Here in Algiers, we have a lot of opportunities, and people are more open-minded,” Mezhoud said. “But it's not the same in all of Algeria.”

Ibtissam Touhami is working to address that by training women to enhance their small businesses through sustainability with support from WE2 in Laghouat province, about 400 km south of the capital city in October 2024.

The program, she said, has helped bring together the women in Laghouat who were already interested in sustainable entrepreneurship but weren’t yet aware of the community of others like them. She found women interested in things like natural cosmetic products, bioproducts like cheese, and natural dyes for textiles.

Touhami said sustainability is the future of the planet, but it is also the easiest business niche in Algeria to succeed in.

“It doesn't cost much, and you can combine those natural products to create your own commercial products, which would be your economic contribution,” Touhami said.

Touhami says she is trying to help the women she trains to see the potential of creating this “economic ecosystem” where they can collaborate with their local networks of land owners, farmers, and community members to do business. 

Before the Trump Administration froze WE2 funding, Touhami was planning on creating a “workshop caravan” to bring workshops to women who are unable to make it to training because they can’t spend work days or weekends away from home.

“Some of the women in rural societies unfortunately have to go through the ideals of a patriarchal society,” Touhami said. “Because to be able to start a business, your time management is all focused on your business.

Touhami said she still hopes she can create the workshop caravan because WE2 has helped strengthen communities and created a “snowball effect” despite the unclear future of U.S. funding for programs like WE2.

A spokesperson at World Learning Algeria told More to Her Story that the U.S. government will not likely provide stable funding for programs in Algeria in the coming years. But Touhami said even if WE2 funding vanishes, the movement won’t.