Tunisia
A Marginalized
Solar Giant

The war in Ukraine, and then the mounting tensions in the Middle East, have profoundly altered regional energy balances. Europe is now seeking to reduce its dependence on Russian supplies, to diversify its sources of imports, and to accelerate its decarbonisation.

In this context, the countries of the southern Mediterranean occupy a new strategic position. Algeria has once again become an indispensable energy supplier. Morocco aspires to become a major exporter of green electricity and hydrogen. Egypt is consolidating its role as a regional gas hub. Italy seeks to position itself as the principal energy platform linking Africa and Europe.

Tunisia, though located at the heart of this space, appears largely absent from this realignment. This marginalisation is not the result of geographic fate. It is the product of political choices, institutional delays and, more deeply, of an inability to conceive of energy as a lever of national power.

Tunisia's energy history is marked by a fundamental ambiguity. For several decades, Tunisia benefited from its geographic position between Algeria and Italy thanks to the Transmed pipeline, which links the Algerian fields of Hassi R'Mel to the European market. This infrastructure was long presented as a major strategic asset for the country.

This perception nonetheless deserves qualification. Transmed has primarily structured the energy relationship between Algiers and Rome. Tunisia did derive real benefits from it, in the form of royalties and gas deliveries, but it never truly transformed this transit position into an instrument of autonomous power. The gas that crosses its territory has contributed more to reinforcing the energy interdependence between Algeria and Europe than to consolidating Tunisia's place within the Mediterranean space.

For a long time, this situation nonetheless helped to mask the growing fragilities of the national energy system. The revenues associated with transit and the national resources still available sustained the illusion of relative energy security. That period, however, is now over.

Primary energy production has fallen from around 8.3 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the early 2010s to less than 3.5 million today. Over the same period, national consumption has continued to rise under the effect of population growth, urbanisation and increasing industrial demand. According to the National Observatory of Energy and Mines, the energy deficit now exceeds 65% of national needs1.

This evolution reflects a major strategic shift. Tunisia is no longer a producing country benefiting from a transit rent. It has become an importing country dependent on the energy corridor it hosts on its own territory.

The distinction is essential. It profoundly alters regional balances of power. What once constituted a source of energy security is now tending to become a factor of vulnerability.

Tunisia's energy dependence is today largely structured by its relationship with Algeria. More than 90% of the electricity produced in the country relies on natural gas. A significant share of this gas is imported directly or indirectly from its Algerian neighbour2.

This dependence is often presented as natural given the geographic proximity of the two countries and their historical ties. Yet it creates a growing strategic asymmetry. Algeria has several export options: it sells its gas to Europe via Transmed, is developing its liquefied natural gas capacity, and is seeking to diversify its energy partnerships. Tunisia, by contrast, has no credible alternative in the short term. National resources continue to decline, while substitution capacities remain limited.

This situation exposes the country directly to developments in international markets. Algerian gas contracts are generally indexed to oil prices, with periodic revision mechanisms. A lasting rise in oil therefore translates mechanically into an increase in energy supply costs. The tensions observed around the Strait of Hormuz, or disruptions in world markets, can thus produce significant effects on Tunisian public finances, even when physical supplies remain secured.

Energy dependence then becomes a systemic dependence. It affects not only electricity generation, but also agriculture, transport, industry and the budgetary balance of the state.

This dependence comes at a moment when the Mediterranean space is undergoing a profound transformation. Since 2022, Europe has been seeking to rebuild its energy architecture around new corridors and new partnerships.

In this reconfiguration, Italy occupies a central place. Rome aspires to become the principal European energy hub, drawing on its interconnections with North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Algeria has once again become a major strategic partner in this perspective. Energy relations between Algiers and Rome have strengthened considerably in recent years.

Morocco is pursuing a different but equally ambitious strategy. The kingdom identified the energy transition very early on as a tool of economic and diplomatic projection. The creation of MASEN, the development of the Noor complex and the massive investments in green hydrogen reflect a long-term vision articulating energy, industry and foreign policy3. Egypt follows a comparable logic, combining gas extraction, regional infrastructure and the development of renewables.

Faced with these trajectories, Tunisia appears singularly absent. It controls no major energy flow. It has not developed significant storage capacity. It has no genuine regional energy market. It has not built the institutional apparatus needed to steer an ambitious energy strategy. Its geographic position remains exceptional. Yet it has not been transformed into a lever of power.

Faced with the gradual exhaustion of national fossil resources, solar power often appears as a strategic self-evidence for Tunisia. The figures seem to argue in its favour.

According to the Global Solar Atlas developed by Solargis for the World Bank Group, annual solar irradiation exceeds 2,200 kWh/m² in several regions of the south of the country, placing it among the highest levels in the Mediterranean basin. Certain areas of Tataouine, Kébili or Tozeur enjoy a potential greater than that of most European regions which have nonetheless built world-class photovoltaic industries1.

Yet the existence of a resource does not guarantee its transformation into economic or geopolitical power. The history of development abounds with examples of countries richly endowed with natural resources that never managed to convert them into industrial capacity or strategic influence. Tunisia's solar potential today risks running up against this same difficulty.

Mastering the value chains

The national debate tends too often to reduce the energy transition to a question of installed capacity. How many megawatts should be built? How much foreign investment should be attracted? What volume of electricity should be injected into the grid? These questions are important, but they remain secondary. The real question concerns the mastery of the value chains that accompany this transition.

Tunisia manufactures neither photovoltaic cells, nor modules at scale, nor storage equipment. Nor does it possess an industry capable of producing the strategic components required for the energy transition. The projects currently under development rely essentially on imported technologies, international financing and foreign operators. Under these conditions, the increase in renewable electricity generation does not translate automatically into an industrial ascent.

This situation contrasts sharply with the trajectories observed among certain neighbours. Morocco has used large renewable projects as a lever for industrial structuring, skills formation and the development of a fabric of specialised firms. Egypt has integrated its energy strategy into a broader vision of industrial and logistical development. Tunisia, by contrast, remains largely confined within a logic of electricity generation.

The challenge, then, is not merely to produce more solar energy. It consists in determining who will finance the infrastructure, who will master the technologies, who will train the engineers, who will control the grids and who will capture the value created. Without an answer to these questions, the energy transition risks reducing dependence on hydrocarbons without thereby strengthening the country's strategic autonomy.

This question is particularly visible in the debates surrounding green hydrogen. For several years, the European Union has regarded North Africa as one of the most promising spaces for the future supply of the decarbonised molecules required for the transformation of its industry.

From the European standpoint, this strategy is rational. The countries of the southern Mediterranean enjoy abundant sunshine, available space and geographic proximity to European markets. Producing green hydrogen in Tunisia or Morocco may appear more competitive than doing so in northern Europe.

This logic, however, raises an essential question for the producing countries: what place will actually be reserved for them in this new energy economy? The risk is that of the emergence of a new international division of energy labour, in which the European countries would retain mastery of the technologies, the financing, the innovation and the markets, while the countries of the south would essentially supply the natural resources required for the transition.

Such a configuration would not be fundamentally different from the economic relations that have long characterised exchanges between the two shores of the Mediterranean. The sun would replace hydrocarbons or agricultural raw materials as the exported resource, but the general structure of dependence would remain unchanged.

For Tunisia, the danger is real. The green hydrogen projects currently under consideration represent considerable amounts of investment. They mobilise the interest of major international groups and fit within European decarbonisation strategies. Yet the question of national spillovers remains largely open.

How many skilled jobs will be created? What share of the value chain will remain in Tunisia? What skills will be transferred? What knock-on effects will be produced on the local industrial fabric? These questions are rarely at the centre of the debates. Yet they will largely determine whether or not Tunisia's energy transition is sovereign.

Historical experience shows that infrastructure does not automatically produce development. Pipelines, ports, industrial zones or mines only become engines of economic transformation when they are embedded in a coherent national strategy. Without this, they may on the contrary reinforce existing forms of dependence. Tunisia's true challenge is therefore not merely to integrate the global energy transition: it consists in avoiding occupying a peripheral position within it.

These difficulties ultimately point to a deeper problem. Tunisia's energy vulnerability is not solely the product of a lack of resources or of financial constraints. It is also the reflection of a gradual weakening of the state's strategic capacity.

For more than a decade, Tunisia seems to have lost part of its capacity to think in the long term. Successive governments have been mobilised primarily by the management of budgetary emergencies, political crises and social tensions. Structuring choices have been continually postponed.

The energy sector illustrates this dynamic perfectly. The first signals of the depletion of the historic fields had nonetheless been identified long ago. The growing dependence on imported gas was known. The need for diversification had been documented by numerous national and international reports. Yet strategic decisions have often been delayed or fragmented2.

This situation contrasts with the trajectories observed elsewhere in the region. Morocco created, as early as 2010, a specialised agency tasked with steering the energy transition. Egypt embedded its energy projects within a long-term regional strategy. Even Algeria, despite the limits of its rentier model, has retained a planning capacity that allows it to negotiate directly with the principal European powers.

Tunisia, by contrast, seems to have gradually lost control of its own energy calendar. Reforms advance under the pressure of deficits, international lenders or supply emergencies, rather than from an explicitly formulated national vision.

This crisis of the strategic state also appears in the management of transit infrastructure. Transmed has crossed Tunisian territory for more than forty years. Yet the country still possesses no significant gas storage capacity, no regional gas market, and no trading activities capable of valorising this geographic position3.

The same observation holds for renewables. The potential exists. The resources are abundant. The investors are present. But the institutions capable of articulating energy, industry, innovation, training and economic diplomacy remain insufficiently developed.

The central question then becomes political. Will Tunisia's energy transition merely be an adaptation to transformations decided elsewhere, or will it become a national project of economic transformation? The answer depends less on technology than on the state's ability to recover a strategic function.

The Tunisian energy debate is often held prisoner by an artificial opposition between openness and sovereignty. On one side, some consider that attracting foreign investment is the only possible solution to the energy crisis. On the other, sovereigntist discourses regularly denounce the concessions granted to international operators and the dependencies that flow from them. This opposition is misleading.

Energy sovereignty does not mean energy autarky. No country, including among the great powers, is entirely autonomous in the energy domain. Interdependencies have become a structural feature of the world economy. True sovereignty lies in the capacity to organise these interdependencies rather than to submit to them.

In this respect, the essential question for Tunisia is not how to cut itself off from international markets or foreign partners. It consists in determining under what conditions these relationships can strengthen rather than weaken its capacity for action.

The current dependence on Algerian gas, the accumulated lag in renewables and the gradual marginalisation within Mediterranean geopolitics all reveal the same reality: the absence of a national energy doctrine articulating energy security, industrial policy, economic diplomacy and ecological transition.

And yet the Mediterranean is today entering a new historical phase. Energy infrastructure, electricity interconnections, hydrogen corridors and decarbonisation technologies are redrawing regional hierarchies. The countries that succeed in articulating these transformations with a strategic vision will strengthen their autonomy and their influence. The others risk becoming mere spaces of transit or of production, serving strategies conceived elsewhere.

Tunisia still possesses considerable assets: an exceptional geographic position, a solar potential among the highest in the region, proximity to European markets and a long tradition of technical expertise. But these resources will produce no automatic advantage. The true challenge is therefore not energy-related. It is strategic. It consists in rebuilding a state capable of thinking in the long term, of coordinating public policies and of defining a place for Tunisia in the post-carbon Mediterranean that is now emerging.