COVER N. 630 - ALGERIA

Postmark: First Day Postmark in Arabic and regular postmark issued at Kouba - 20.07.2025 

Posted on the 20th July; Received on the  20th August 2025

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A large First Day Cover from Algeria, full of goodies inside. شكراً جزيلاً, Hocine!

- Born into an Afro-Caribbean family in the French island of  Martinique in the Caribbean, Franz Fanon (1925-1961) a distinguished psychiatrist and anti-colonialist, would pursue his early studies in Fort-de-France on the same Island.

At the early age of 18, with the second world war raging,  he joined  the Free French Forces and he would see combat action in Europe, having been wounded while fighting in the Voges.

After the war Fanon graduated from the University of Lyon as a Psychiatrist and he would pursue studies into the psychological effects of colonisation upon black people, which would become the central theme of his first book, "Black skin, white masks", published in 1952.

The following year,  Fanon would go to Algeria, where he worked at the  Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital.

His strong anti-colonialist convictions led him to enroll in the FNL, the Algerian National Liberation Front, to fight for the independence of Algeria,  and resign from  his functions at the hospital where he was ironically tasked with treating French soldiers and officers who performed acts of torture against locals, whom he also had to treat.

Having developed Leukaemia while in exile, in Tunis, he would later travel to the United States to seek treatment, but he would eventually die in  Bethesda, Maryland, in 1963.

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth Algérie Poste issued on 28JUL2025 the celebratory 25 Dinar stamp on the cover, illustrated with Franz Fanon portrait.

The First Day postmark replicates the illustration of the stamp.

- The 7th Natural Gas Exporter Summit  took place in the city of Algiers, on the 2nd March 2024. 

The summit brought together Heads of State and Government from Member Countries, including Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, from Observer Members, namely Angola, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Peru, and from Guest Countries, including Italy, Oman, Senegal, and Tunisia. 

The conclusions of the summit were summon up in what became known as the Algiers Declaration expressing the leaders’ resolve to “promote natural gas as an abundant, affordable, flexible and reliable energy source, and harness and develop more environmentally-friendly, efficient and sustainable natural gas technologies”.

On the occasion of the Summit, Algérie Poste issued on 29FEB2024, the 50 Dinar stamp on the cover, illustrated with the logo of the summit.

The cover was posted at Kouba, a suburb town of Algiers, the capital or Algeria, in the North of the country.