Rarely, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia brought together the dossier “Knowledge, know-how and practices linked to the production and consumption of couscous”, without arguing over the authorship of this traditional dish. semolina or durum wheat base, served with expertly spiced vegetables, meat or fish.
In the four countries, “women and men, young and old, sedentary and nomadic, from the rural or urban world, as well as from emigration, all identify” with this dish symbol of “living together”, affirms the presentation file which does not give any recipe.
Savored from the sands of the Sahel and the Sahara to the coast of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, its origin is immemorial, and its “remarkable universal dimension”, according to this file.
As was underlined when the application was submitted, in March 2019, this is the first time that four Maghreb countries have united their efforts on a common subject. The initiative has raised hopes that the dish will be the start of a political rapprochement.
In September 2016, the announcement by Algeria of its intention to submit a file to Unesco had aroused the ire of its Moroccan neighbor, a great political, diplomatic and cultural rival, until an agreement was reached. .
The construction of a large Maghreb is undermined by the tense relations between the two neighbors, in the midst of the crisis surrounding the Western Sahara issue, a former Spanish colony both claimed by the Moroccan kingdom and the separatists of the Polisario Front.
Dissensions over the status of this immense desert territory hamper the implementation of the Arab Maghreb Union (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania and Libya), causing these countries to lose several points of GDP, according to international experts.
Present in the Sahel (Mauritania, Mali, Senegal), couscous spread very early on around the Mediterranean then in the rest of the world. Offered in the most modest restaurants, “revisited” by the greatest chefs, the dish appears at a banquet at the “Gargantua” written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, the most famous writer of the French Renaissance.