text: The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 marked a turning point in Franco-Algerian relations and sparked the Algerian War which concluded with Algeria gaining its independence on 5 July 1962 and the proclamation of the People's Democratic Republic on 25 September of that year.The official languages of Algeria are Arabic and Berber.The majority of Algeria's population is Arab, practicing Islam.The native Algerian Arabic is the main spoken language.French also serves as an administrative and educational language in some contexts, but it has no official status.Algeria is a semi-presidential republic, with local constituencies consisting of 58 provinces and 1,541 communes.Algeria is a regional power in North Africa, and a middle power in global affairs.It has the highest Human Development Index of all continental African countries and one of the largest economies on the continent, based largely on energy exports.Algeria has the world's sixteenth-largest oil reserves and the ninth-largest reserves of natural gas.Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa, supplying large amounts of natural gas to Europe.Algeria's military is one of the largest in Africa, and has the largest defence budget on the continent.It is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, the OIC, OPEC, the United Nations, and the Arab Maghreb Union, of which it is a founding member.Name Other forms of the name are: , ; Berber languages: , , ; .It is officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria (; , abbreviated as RADP).Etymology Algeria's name derives from the city of Algiers which in turn derives from the Arabic (, "the islands") in reference to four small islands off its coast, a truncated form of the older (, "islands of Bani Mazghanna").The name was given by Buluggin ibn Ziri after he established the city on the ruins of the Phoenician city of Icosium in 950.