The Berber flag or Amazigh flag is an ethnic flag used as a common symbol of related ethnic groups in North Africa. The flag was created to symbolize culture, but with the rise of Berberism it also began to be used in political contexts. The flag was inaugurated in Wadya, a town of Kabylia situated in Tizi Ouzou, a province of Algeria, by an elder Algerian Kabylian veteran, Youcef Medkour.

Description

The flag is composed of blue, green, and yellow horizontal bands of the same height, and a Tifinagh letter yaz or aza. Each colour corresponds to an aspect of Tamazgha, the territory inhabited by the Berbers in North Africa: The letter z represents the word Amazigh, the root of which it is taken from.

History

Mohand Arav Bessaoud, Algerian activist and founder of Berber Academy, designed the flag in 1970. It was used in demonstrations in the 1980s, and in 1997, the World Amazigh Congress at Tafira on Las Palmas in the Canary Islands made the flag official. During the Hirak movement in 2019, the Amazigh flag was banned from use in Algeria.