The University of Batna (French: Université de Batna, also named Université Colonel Hadj Lakhdar, Arabic: جامعة باتنة) is a public university in the city of Batna, Algeria. It was created in 1977 and has grown steadily since then; it is now one of the largest universities in North Africa. It presently has eight faculties and a total of over 31,000 students. When the university was created, it started with two institutes, Law sciences and Arabic Literature and Language. It later gained several institutes including Exact sciences, Biological sciences, Medical sciences, Economic sciences, Foreign languages and Agronomy. In 1985 the university was reorganized under a new administrative structure called INES (National Institutes of High Education), and in 1990, it was again replaced by many institutes, each of which contains many departments. In 2001, it was reorganized to a set of faculties. Each faculty has several departments spread in nine sites around the city. The new and the most important site of the university, located in the southern area of the city of Batna, has four important faculties, the central library and many infrastructures. Dr.