Tunisia

Country Code
TN
Region
MNA
Knowledge Provider
4
Knowledge Receiver
4
country iso3
TUN

Typically, attaining high education is expected to increase one’s probability of joining the labor force. In Tunisia, people with high education face a high probability of being unemployed. More than half of the Tunisian working-age population remains outside the labor force. Reconsidering the role of TVET is critical in bridging gaps in the supply and demand of skills for the labor market and possibly increasing employment rates. Critical stakeholders such as employers and other private sector actors are barely involved in the design and curriculum offering in Tunisia’s TVET sector.   

The Government of Tunisia sought to move forward its decentralization agenda in response to citizens’ demands for more accountable, effective, and efficient government. To gain knowledge on how to best operationalize an ambitious agenda for decentralization and local government empowerment, the Government participated in a knowledge exchange with Turkey. It hoped to gain the experience of good practice approaches in shifting from ex ante control to ex post oversight and increasing the efficacy of local government service delivery and management.

Reforms granting autonomy to Senegalese hospitals in 2002 did not lead to improvements in hospital performance or financial management. Less than ten years after the reforms, a World Bank study requested by Senegalese policymakers found that hospitals were struggling financially and that management was not sufficiently accountable to any entity. Meanwhile, Moroccan and Tunisian hospital reforms had led to better health outcomes and more efficient hospital administration.

The national water utility in Djibouti faced significant challenges with insufficient human capacity, degraded infrastructure, and out-of-date operations. The Ministry of Finance recognized the need to improve the utility’s performance, and with World Bank support prepared a knowledge exchange with the water utility in Tunisia, which had strengthened its performance. The exchange led to an action plan for Djibouti and a long-term cooperative partnership with Tunisia.

Challenge

To ensure universal access to affordable telecommunications services, Tunisian and Mauritanian officials engaged in an exchange with Turkey on ways to reform and liberalize their telecom sectors, with an emphasis on broadband. They learned how to open up telecom markets to competition, align regulatory frameworks to EU standards, and balance investment incentives with protecting competition in fiber optic networks.

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Challenge

In the wake of the Jasmine revolution, the Government of Tunisia made it a priority to improve government accountability and openness.  One way it sought to do so was through information and communication technologies (ICT). In 2011, the Government considered joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Chaired by Brazil, this platform of over 60 countries promotes open government, requiring member countries to satisfy criteria related to open data, access to information, open budgeting, and other conditions.