By Jason Mitchell Algeria — Africa’s biggest country by geographic area — is poised to become one of China’s biggest global suppliers of iron ore, enabling Beijing to move away from its reliance on Australian imports to feed its steel industry. The country is Africa’s biggest natural gas producer and fourth largest oil producer but is also rich in minerals. As well as mining metals such as gold, iron ore, silver and zinc, Algeria produces a wide variety of industrial mineral commodities, including ammonia, barite, cement, clay (bentonite, common, kaolin), diatomite, dolomite, feldspar, gypsum,…