The Byzantine-inspired Notre Dame d'Afrique, well-known in the neighbourhood as Madame Afrique, sits above the bustle of the town apparently impervious to the fact that the people who created it and filled its pews have long vanished. The idea for the church is said to have come from two women of Lyon, who missed the holy place that sits above their local city and who placed a statue of the virgin in the hollow of an olive tree on the north of the town.

The church was finally consecrated in 1872 by Bishop Lavigerie, initiator of the White Fathers. Four years later, the sculpture was crowned queen of Africa with the approval of the Pope in Rome. The date of that event, 30 April, has become the sculpture’s feast day. Sitting 120 metres above sea level on the highland of Bouzaréah, the basilica is, above all, a memorial to departed French piousness; its walls are covered in small memorial plaques, located by people in need of the Virgin's help.

Accumulation is said every day in French and on Friday in English. In November 2006 the European Union, French government and city of Algiers agreed to share the expenditure of restoring the structure.