The paradox of industrial sovereignty: Global franchise reconfiguration and the Zara episode as a diagnostic window, socio-economic equilibria and Algeria as the backbone of African co-development

This article examines Algeria’s attempt to convert a rentier trade structure into a selectively embedded industrial economy. It situates that attempt within a four-phase historical periodisation (1962–1986, 1986–1999, 2000–2019, 2019–2026) that demonstrates the durability of the rentier constraint across successive strategies. It argues that Law No. 22-18 on investment and the Finance Law for 2026 constitute a system of sovereign filters: they impose no universal ban on import retail but make productive investment the privileged route to scale and fiscal advantage. The analysis links this architecture to the 2026 expenditure envelope of DZD 17.6367 trillion (≈US$135 billion), the 4.1% growth baseline and a corporate tax structure taxing production at 19% against 26% for import resale. Methodologically, the study employs policy tracing and interpretive institutional analysis over a corpus of legislation, macro-fiscal data, development-bank reports, and triangulated corporate and media records, explicitly bounding its inferences to what public sources establish. It deploys the Zara episode as a diagnostic window, a stress test of import-dependent franchising, rather than as a standalone comprehensive case study. The record establishes temporary closures caused by stock problems, not a permanent Inditex withdrawal. The article cautions that, absent fiscal discipline, transparent performance contracts and corridor governance, the architecture risks degenerating into cosmetic localisation, rent-seeking, bureaucratic inertia and implementation slippage.