The mosque first opened for prayers back in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic. However, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and its effects, the president of the country who at the time had fallen ill with the disease, did not attend.
However, after 4 years of delay president Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday, officially inaugurated the mosque, as seen in the Tanzanian news publication, The Citizen.
The Great Mosque of Algiers, which was constructed in the 2010s by a Chinese construction company, has the highest minaret in the world, standing at 869 feet (265 meters).
It also boasts an area for prayer that can hold 120,000 people. In addition to a helicopter landing pad and a library with the capacity to hold a million books, its modernist architecture honors Algerian heritage and culture with flourishes from the Arab and North African cultures.
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The project was built within the space of 7 years and cost around $800 million, leaving critics to label it a vanity project.
A report by the New York-based news agency, the Association Press (AP), also showed that years of political upheaval in the regions “transformed the project from a symbol of state-sponsored strength and religiosity to one of delays and cost overruns.”
According to AP, the former President of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika envisioned the idea of building Africa’s largest mosque. He planned to name it the “Abdelaziz Bouteflika Mosque” in his legacy, however, Algeria’s 2019 protest which ousted him from office, disrupted this plan, alongside his plan to inaugurate it in 2019.
