Events & Gatherings

Setting the stage: why development paradigms are being reconsidered

The combination of accelerating climate change, technological competition, geopolitical fragmentation, shifting patterns of globalisation and renewed industrial policies has created a context in which many of the assumptions underpinning development strategies over the past three decades no longer appear adequate.

Throughout the discussions there was broad agreement that the era during which development was primarily understood through market liberalisation, macroeconomic stability and integration into global value chains has reached its limits. While these policies contributed to growth in many contexts, they often failed to generate the productive transformation, technological upgrading and resilience required for long-term development. Instead, many developing economies remain locked into low-value-added activities, highly dependent on commodity exports or external financing, and vulnerable to increasingly volatile international markets.

This reassessment coincides with profound changes in the behaviour of advanced economies themselves. The resurgence of industrial policy in the United States, the European Union, China and several middle-income countries represents a significant departure from the policy prescriptions traditionally promoted by international financial institutions. State interventionism, long portrayed as an obstacle to efficient markets, has returned to the centre of economic strategy through large-scale investments, targeted subsidies, strategic trade measures and technology policies.

The question is no longer whether governments should intervene in economic transformation, but how states can build the institutional capacity necessary to intervene effectively.

Participants also emphasised that development cannot be understood exclusively through macroeconomic indicators such as GDP growth. Sustainable development requires improvements in productivity, employment quality, technological capabilities and institutional effectiveness. The workshop therefore challenged narrow conceptions of economic success that overlook social inclusion, territorial inequalities and political legitimacy.

Underlying these discussions was a broader conceptual shift regarding development policy itself. Rather than focusing primarily on correcting market failures, participants described development as a process of building productive capabilities — one that requires institutional adaptation and long-term coordination between public authorities, private firms, research institutions and financial actors. Development thus becomes an inherently political process requiring continuous negotiation, strategic prioritisation and institutional learning.

Green transition as structural economic transformation

One of the strongest themes emerging from the workshop was the rejection of a narrow understanding of the green transition as primarily an environmental or technological agenda. Across virtually every session, participants argued that decarbonisation should instead be understood as a process of structural economic transformation, capable of reshaping productive systems, industrial organisation and development trajectories. Climate policy, in this perspective, becomes inseparable from industrial upgrading, technological learning, employment creation and state capacity.

Renewable energy technologies were therefore presented less as final objectives than as instruments capable of supporting industrial transformation. Solar and wind resources, green hydrogen production, battery manufacturing and critical minerals all offer significant economic opportunities. Yet these opportunities are not necessarily developmental: countries may export renewable electricity, hydrogen or raw materials without substantially changing the underlying structure of their economies. The transition only becomes transformative when it generates domestic learning, technological upgrading and new productive capabilities.

Participants repeatedly returned to this distinction between participation and transformation. Many developing economies have successfully integrated into international production networks while remaining confined to relatively low-value activities such as resource extraction, assembly or basic manufacturing. The challenge for North African countries is therefore not merely to enter green industries, but to progressively occupy more sophisticated segments of production involving engineering, research, design, advanced manufacturing and innovation.

This emphasis fundamentally alters the rationale for industrial policy. Traditional industrial policies often focused on protecting specific sectors or promoting domestic manufacturing through tariffs and subsidies. The discussions in Tangier instead highlighted a more dynamic understanding centred on capability accumulation: green industrial policy is valuable not because it supports particular technologies, but because it creates opportunities for firms, workers and institutions to acquire new knowledge, master increasingly complex production processes and develop competitive domestic industries.

Under a scenario of green extractivism, North African countries would supply renewable electricity, hydrogen or critical raw materials to external markets while importing the technologies, machinery and high-value services associated with these sectors. Carbon emissions might decline, but the underlying international division of labour would remain largely unchanged.

Avoiding this outcome requires a deliberate focus on domestic value creation: strengthening local supplier networks, supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, encouraging technology transfer, developing engineering capabilities and expanding research and development. Productive transformation depends less on the quantity of investment attracted than on the quality of the productive linkages generated within the domestic economy.

The discussions also challenged the assumption that technological change naturally diffuses through foreign direct investment. Technology transfer was repeatedly described as an institutional rather than a commercial process: learning requires active interaction between domestic firms, universities, research centres, technical institutes and public agencies.

Finally, participants argued that the green transition creates a rare historical window of opportunity. The simultaneous restructuring of global energy systems, industrial production and international value chains opens new possibilities for late industrialisation — but these opportunities will not remain available indefinitely.

Building productive capabilities: the central objective of green industrial policy

If one concept consistently underpinned the discussions, it was that of capabilities. Although speakers approached the subject from different disciplinary perspectives — economics, political science, development studies, finance, energy policy — they repeatedly returned to the same proposition: the ultimate objective of industrial policy is not simply to increase investment, expand production or improve exports, but to build the productive capabilities upon which long-term development depends.

These different forms of knowledge reinforce one another. Industrial transformation does not result from the accumulation of physical capital alone; it depends equally upon organisational and institutional capabilities that allow societies to absorb, adapt and improve technologies over successive generations.

Capabilities, participants insisted, cannot simply be imported. Technologies may be purchased, foreign firms may establish production facilities and external investors may finance infrastructure — yet productive capabilities themselves emerge through processes of learning that are necessarily domestic, cumulative, collective and deeply embedded within national institutions.

This understanding places learning at the centre of industrial policy. Rather than the implementation of a predetermined blueprint, development was described as an adaptive process through which governments and firms gradually acquire practical knowledge. Successful industrial policies are not those that avoid mistakes altogether, but those capable of learning from experimentation, identifying successful initiatives and correcting failures before they become systemic.

Several speakers explicitly challenged the assumption that market forces alone generate such learning. Firms often underinvest in training because skilled workers may subsequently leave; private investors frequently avoid research whose benefits extend beyond individual companies; universities may remain disconnected from industrial needs. These coordination problems justify an active role for public institutions — not to replace markets, but to facilitate the collective learning upon which competitive industries depend.

Participants further argued that industrial ecosystems constitute the environments within which learning occurs. Competitive firms rarely develop in isolation; they emerge within dense networks linking manufacturers, suppliers, universities, vocational training centres, financial institutions, regulatory agencies and public administrations. Green industrial policy should therefore focus not only on attracting flagship investments but also on strengthening these broader ecosystems — including the small and medium-sized enterprises through which knowledge diffuses across the wider economy.

Capability accumulation is cumulative and path-dependent. Countries rarely move directly from resource extraction to technological leadership. Patience therefore becomes a strategic virtue.

Reimagining the developmental state: capacity, coordination, learning

Few concepts received greater attention than state capacity. Yet the understanding emerging from the discussions differs significantly from traditional conceptions: rather than advocating a return to state-led production or central planning, participants articulated a vision of the developmental state centred on coordination, institutional learning and strategic governance.

Participants therefore consistently described the state as a coordinator rather than simply a regulator. Structural transformation requires investments that span multiple sectors and institutions simultaneously. Renewable energy projects depend upon electricity grids, ports, logistics, vocational training, universities, financial systems and research institutions — none of which can be developed independently.

Coordination also extends to the relationship between industrial policy and other domains of public policy. Several speakers argued that industrial strategies frequently fail because they remain disconnected from education, research, infrastructure, financial regulation or territorial development. Industrial policy should therefore be understood less as a sectoral intervention than as an organising framework linking multiple public institutions around common developmental objectives.

Another recurring theme concerned institutional continuity. Industrial transformation unfolds over decades, whereas political systems often operate within much shorter cycles. Governments change, priorities shift, administrative reforms are introduced and subsequently abandoned. One defining characteristic of successful developmental states is their ability to preserve strategic continuity while remaining sufficiently flexible to adapt to changing circumstances.

Several participants also highlighted the importance of what might be termed embedded autonomy. Governments require sufficient autonomy to pursue long-term developmental objectives, yet they must remain closely connected to productive actors in order to understand evolving technological and market conditions. Continuous dialogue between public authorities, private firms, business associations, universities and civil society enables governments to identify emerging constraints while avoiding excessive bureaucratic isolation.

State capacity is inseparable from political capacity: the ability to generate consensus around long-term national development objectives while managing the social tensions generated by structural change.

Taken together, these discussions point towards a renewed conception of the developmental state. The state emerges neither as a substitute for markets nor as a passive regulator, but as the institution responsible for organising collective learning and aligning public and private actors around shared developmental goals.

Navigating a fragmented world: agency, geopolitics and strategic integration

Participants treated the international environment less as a fixed external constraint than as a dynamic political space within which states retain meaningful room for manoeuvre. Deterministic interpretations of globalisation were rejected in favour of an emphasis on agency — the capacity of governments to shape their own development trajectories despite growing geopolitical uncertainty.

The international context described throughout the workshop differs fundamentally from that which shaped development debates during the final decades of the twentieth century. Rather than moving towards greater integration under a relatively stable liberal order, the global economy is increasingly characterised by geopolitical rivalry, technological competition and strategic fragmentation. Major powers have returned to industrial policy; trade has become more closely intertwined with national security; supply chains are being reorganised according to strategic rather than purely economic considerations; and climate policy itself has become an instrument of industrial competition.

These transformations should not be read only as sources of instability. As major powers compete to secure critical minerals, renewable energy supplies, industrial partnerships and technological leadership, countries capable of articulating coherent development strategies may find themselves in a stronger negotiating position than during previous phases of globalisation.

This observation was particularly relevant for North Africa. The region combines several structural advantages that are becoming increasingly valuable within the emerging international economy.

Geography creates opportunities; institutions determine whether these opportunities are realised.

Strategic autonomy was never presented as economic isolation or national self-sufficiency, but as the capacity to make meaningful policy choices within an interdependent world. Countries possessing diversified productive structures, capable public institutions and strong technological capabilities enjoy greater freedom to negotiate with external partners because they are less dependent upon any single source of finance, technology or export demand. Agency therefore derives from capability.

These discussions also led participants to reconsider international cooperation itself. Europe remains an essential partner because of its market size, technological capabilities and regulatory influence. However, China, the Gulf countries, African regional organisations and multilateral development institutions also offer distinct forms of cooperation. The challenge is not to choose between competing geopolitical blocs but to combine different partnerships in ways that maximise domestic developmental benefits — which requires governments to define clear industrial priorities before engaging with international partners.

A final recurring idea was that geopolitical fragmentation increases the importance of resilience. Recent crises — the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, disruptions to global shipping — have highlighted the vulnerabilities associated with excessive dependence on geographically concentrated supply chains. Industrial policy thus becomes not only a strategy for growth but also an instrument for reducing strategic vulnerability.

Governing capital: finance, investment and the political economy of transformation

While international discussions on climate finance have often focused on mobilising greater volumes of investment, the workshop proposed a different analytical perspective: the central question is not whether sufficient financial resources exist globally, but how capital is governed, allocated and embedded within broader processes of productive transformation. Finance is not simply an enabling condition for industrial development; it is itself one of the principal arenas through which development trajectories are shaped.

This perspective begins by recognising a striking paradox. North African countries possess some of the world's most favourable renewable energy resources and increasingly attractive industrial opportunities, yet they also face significantly higher borrowing costs than advanced economies. The principal obstacle to green industrialisation is therefore not necessarily the cost of renewable technologies, but the cost of capital itself: macroeconomic instability, sovereign risk perceptions, currency volatility and underdeveloped domestic financial systems frequently offset the competitive advantages created by abundant renewable resources.

A major point of discussion concerned the merits of blended finance. Participants acknowledged its potential while cautioning against treating private capital mobilisation as an objective in itself. Public guarantees and concessional finance undoubtedly reduce investment risks, but the ultimate criterion should remain developmental impact rather than financial leverage alone.

Several speakers also questioned the dominant project-based approach to climate finance. Renewable energy investments are often evaluated individually according to narrowly defined commercial criteria, whereas industrial transformation depends upon broader systems of complementary investments: electricity generation requires transmission infrastructure; green hydrogen depends upon water management, ports, engineering services, research institutions and specialised training; manufacturing competitiveness relies upon logistics, certification systems, supplier networks and financial services.

The workshop therefore advanced a broader conception of development finance in which financial institutions support industrial ecosystems rather than individual assets. Public investment banks, national development funds and multilateral institutions can play particularly important roles in coordinating long-term investments whose benefits extend well beyond individual firms — and in supplying the patient capital that short-horizon financial markets systematically underprovide.

The growing importance of sovereign wealth funds, particularly those originating in the Gulf, was viewed as a significant opportunity, while participants stressed that recipient governments must remain attentive to the broader developmental implications of such investments. Financial partnerships should be assessed not only according to the capital they provide, but according to their contribution to domestic technological capabilities, local supplier development and industrial diversification.

Domestic financial systems matter just as much. Banking sectors across much of North Africa continue to favour relatively low-risk activities, while venture capital, equity markets and innovation financing remain comparatively underdeveloped. Strengthening these domestic ecosystems therefore constitutes an important component of long-term industrial strategy.

Who governs capital, according to which priorities, and for whose benefit? Financial systems are never neutral: they influence which sectors expand, which technologies diffuse, which firms survive and which regions receive investment.

Perhaps the most original contribution of the workshop was its implicit expansion of state capacity into what might be described as financial state capacity — development banks, public investment funds, export credit agencies, sovereign financing mechanisms and regulatory institutions capable of influencing patterns of capital allocation. Industrial policy ultimately depends upon the state's ability to govern finance as much as its ability to regulate production.

Political ownership, social justice and the governance of transformation

Beyond industrial policy, finance and technological change, the workshop consistently returned to a broader political question: under what conditions can structural transformation become socially legitimate and politically sustainable? The success of the green transition will ultimately depend less upon technological feasibility than upon the ability of societies to build political coalitions capable of sustaining long-term change. Green industrialisation is therefore not merely an economic strategy; it is fundamentally a political project.

This perspective was introduced from the opening session, where representatives of the Open Society Foundations reflected upon the evolution of the organisation's own thinking. Rather than presenting democracy, economic development and climate action as separate agendas, they argued that these challenges have become increasingly interconnected. Democratic institutions cannot remain resilient if they coexist with persistent economic insecurity, declining social mobility and limited prospects for younger generations; equally, economic transformation cannot succeed without capable public institutions and broad political legitimacy.

This political dimension proved particularly relevant for North Africa. Several participants observed that the region has experienced successive waves of externally encouraged reform, from structural adjustment programmes and market liberalisation to democratic transition initiatives. Although many of these reforms pursued legitimate objectives, they often remained only partially implemented or insufficiently embedded within domestic political institutions — weakening existing institutional arrangements without generating broadly accepted alternatives.

The workshop repeatedly returned to this experience as a lesson for the green transition. Unless climate policies, industrial strategies and new regulatory frameworks become integrated into nationally defined development projects, they risk reproducing earlier patterns of incomplete institutional change. The transition should therefore not be framed primarily around compliance with international climate obligations or external regulatory standards, but as a domestic development strategy capable of generating employment, strengthening productive sectors, improving public services and expanding economic opportunities.

Participants consistently rejected the idea that climate action and social justice constitute competing priorities. On the contrary, the political viability of decarbonisation depends precisely upon its capacity to improve living standards while reducing environmental risks.

Social inclusivity is therefore critical. Women, young people and historically marginalised communities must be integrated into new industrial opportunities if the transition is to generate durable legitimacy: technical education, vocational training, entrepreneurship programmes and improved access to skilled employment all contribute to ensuring that green industrialisation benefits wider segments of society. So too do earnest consultations with communities affected by investment projects.

Owing to their prodigious use of land and water, many of the region's major solar and wind farms have brought profound disruptions to livelihoods and forms of communal life — and have rarely generated employment at scale. This must change.

The workshop also highlighted the importance of developmental coalitions. Structural transformation inevitably redistributes economic opportunities and alters existing power relations, so governments require broad alliances bringing together public institutions, private firms, universities, financial organisations, labour representatives and civil society. Industrial policy consequently becomes a process of collective governance rather than unilateral state intervention.

Perhaps the most original political insight concerns the relationship between agency and ownership. States cannot exercise meaningful agency internationally unless development strategies are simultaneously rooted in broad domestic consensus. National ownership therefore becomes the political foundation upon which international bargaining power ultimately rests.

Towards a new political economy of green development

Politicising vulnerabilities: PNT's analytical framework

From the outset, the organisers recalled that the aim is not to juxtapose specialised diagnoses on energy, public finances or agriculture, but to understand how these dimensions are articulated within a single system of vulnerabilities.

The Tunisian case appears particularly revealing in this respect. Tunisia combines a strong energy dependency, an unfinished energy transition, significant food dependency, a subsidy system that is difficult to reform, weak growth, an under-invested productive apparatus and weakened institutions. It thus constitutes a laboratory for the tensions that many states of the Global South will face in a context of geopolitical fragmentation, global energy transition and the multiplication of shocks.

Energy prices, subsidies, agricultural inputs, foreign-currency reserves, monetary statistics and storage capacities are not mere technical variables. They constitute the concrete sites where the material sovereignty of states is at stake.

Politicising these issues does not mean ideologising them. It means making visible the power trade-offs, the distributive effects and the institutional constraints that determine how they are managed.

An economy weakened even before the geopolitical shock

The debates underlined that Tunisia is not approaching the Middle Eastern shock from a position of resilience, but from an economy that is already deeply weakened.

The growth officially reported on a year-on-year basis masks a more degraded reality. According to the analyses presented during the workshop, Tunisia's real GDP would have declined by approximately 0.3% in the first quarter of 2026, while year-on-year comparisons benefit mainly from a base effect linked to the weakness of activity in 2025.

GDP per capita remains below its level prior to the Covid-19 crisis. This prolonged stagnation reflects less a cyclical crisis than a progressive exhaustion of the Tunisian growth model.

The situation of the labour market illustrates this silent degradation. Speakers stressed that the unemployment rate is no longer sufficient to describe the real state of the economy. The central problem now lies in the collapse of the activity rate.

According to the figures discussed during the workshop, Tunisia's activity rate would have fallen to around 45%, one of the lowest in Africa and far below the global average. This decline reflects both the absence of job creation and the silent withdrawal of a growing share of the population from the labour market.

Investment constitutes a second major warning signal. Participants converged on the observation of a country that no longer invests sufficiently. Public investment budgeted in the finance laws is very largely under-executed, while private investment appears almost at a standstill.

Tunisian banks themselves point to the absence of genuine structuring investment projects. Imports of capital goods have remained depressed for several years, and the rare recoveries observed seem more linked to one-off purchases than to a genuine productive dynamic.

But the core of the diagnosis presented during the workshop concerns the monetary and financial structure of the Tunisian economy.

The figures from ECOWEEK and the Central Bank show a strong expansion of the money supply. According to ECOWEEK No. 19-26, the M3 money supply grew by 10.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, while credit to the economy increased by only 3.1%. Banknotes and coins rose by 17.8%, reaching 27.3 billion dinars, or 18.3% of M3. Cash relative to GDP reached 15.1%, compared with 11.7% in 2021, even as credit to the economy grew weakly. Banknotes and coins in circulation are rising rapidly, while the share of cash in GDP is reaching historically high levels.

This evolution reflects several simultaneous phenomena: real inflation stronger than officially measured, growing distrust of the banking system, the rise of the informal sector and a preference for holding foreign currency.

The debates particularly emphasised the transformation of the Tunisian banking system into an instrument for financing the Treasury.

Banks now hold a growing share of sovereign debt, while credit to businesses slows sharply. The more banks finance the state, the less they finance the real economy. The more they accumulate sovereign risk, the more vulnerable they become to a budgetary crisis.

The Central Bank itself appears increasingly mobilised in the service of financing the state, which fuels concerns about a monetisation of the deficit.

This dynamic feeds what several participants described as a genuine fiduciary crisis. Credit to the central government now represents 37.2% of GDP, according to the figures discussed during the workshop, compared with 17.6% in 2021. The Central Bank holds 35.5% of claims on the state on its balance sheet, while Tunisian banks carry nearly 18.7% of sovereign claims among their assets.

The economy continues to function, but at the cost of a growing dependence on monetary expansion, domestic indebtedness and the capture of financial resources by the state.

The Middle Eastern shock as a multiplier of vulnerabilities

The war in the Middle East acts as a systemic stress test for the Tunisian economy.

The debates stressed a central point: the crisis is not transmitted solely through prices. It is also transmitted through the physical availability of goods, logistical disorganisation, tensions on maritime routes and the lengthening of supply lead times.

The energy shock thus rapidly becomes a budgetary shock, then a productive shock and finally a social shock.

Rising oil and gas prices immediately increase the cost of energy subsidies, weigh on the trade deficit and exert additional pressure on foreign-currency reserves.

But the effects then spread to agricultural inputs, transport costs, fertilisers, refined products and all production chains.

The debates showed that Tunisia is particularly vulnerable to this logic of cascading transmission.

Energy dependency increases pressure on the budget; this budgetary pressure reinforces the banking system's dependence on financing the state; rising energy costs are transmitted to food prices; and inflation reduces the purchasing power of already weakened households.

Several presentations also underlined that Tunisian adjustment is already taking place partly through shortages.

When the state can no longer simultaneously finance all the necessary imports, it prioritises certain products considered politically sensitive — notably the soft wheat destined for subsidised bread — at the expense of other components of the food or industrial system.

This logic progressively weakens the dairy, meat and animal-feed sectors, while degrading the nutritional quality of consumption.

The Middle Eastern crisis thus reveals less a temporary problem than a growing structural dependence on external supply chains that have become unstable.

Energy dependency: the strategic cost of non-transition

The second session of the workshop helped to clarify the nature of Tunisia's energy dependency.

According to the figures raised during the debates and the technical presentations, Tunisia covers only between 30 and 35% of its energy needs, depending on whether the gas royalty linked to Algerian transit is included.

The official energy dependency rate reaches around 65%, but it would be close to 70% if the TransMed royalty were neutralised.

This precision is important, because part of the energy counted as a national resource in fact depends on an external geopolitical flow.

Gas constitutes the nodal point of this dependency. Tunisian electricity generation still relies more than 90% on natural gas, mainly imported from Algeria. Gas dependency thus becomes an electrical, industrial and budgetary dependency.

The discussions recalled that Tunisia had had to import Algerian electricity during recent summer consumption peaks, including in periods when Algeria was itself carrying out power cuts on its own territory.

This relationship creates an asymmetric interdependence: Tunisia remains far more vulnerable to a supply interruption than Algeria is to a loss of Tunisian transit.

The presentation devoted to the energy transition nevertheless stressed an essential point: the transition to renewable energy cannot be conceived as a simple technical substitution.

Solar and wind are intermittent resources. Their integration requires storage capacities, robust grids, interconnections, suitable governance and a STEG capable of ensuring the stability of the electrical system.

Electricity, moreover, represents only a fraction of final energy consumption. Transport, certain industrial uses and thermal uses remain heavily dependent on hydrocarbons.

Tunisia's delay in renewables is therefore not explained by the absence of solar or wind potential. It results from a combination of factors: budgetary crisis, financing difficulties, the weakness of STEG, administrative delays, regulatory instability and the absence of a structured industrial ecosystem.

The debates also underlined the risk of an energy transition reduced to a purely extractive logic.

If the large renewable projects are developed exclusively by international companies, without local content, without an industrial strategy and without training, Tunisia will indeed reduce part of its energy bill, but without building a genuine national productive fabric.

The energy transition would then become a mechanism for reducing the external deficit, without any deep transformation of the economic model.

Food security: from cereals to inputs

The third session of the workshop profoundly shifted the food debate.

The Tunisian problem does not lie solely in dependence on cereal imports; it concerns the entire agricultural production chain.

The presentation devoted to agricultural inputs recalled a central idea: a country that is vulnerable in its inputs is vulnerable across its entire food chain.

Modern agriculture relies on a heavy consumption of energy, fertilisers, transport and chemical products.

Natural gas, ammonia, urea, sulphur, fuels, maritime insurance and trade routes have become essential components of food security.

The Strait of Hormuz was thus presented as a food chokepoint as much as an energy one. The data discussed during the workshop recall that around 20% of global oil trade, one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade and 35% of global urea exports transit through this maritime route.

A major share of global trade in oil, liquefied natural gas and urea passes through it. A lasting disruption of this route directly affects fertiliser costs, then agricultural yields and finally global food prices.

Tunisia appears particularly vulnerable in this configuration.

Its cereal self-sufficiency rate remains low, while its storage capacities, water resources and input production remain limited.

The climate crisis further accentuates these constraints. The exploitation of deep aquifers is reaching critical levels, and water fragility pushes agriculture to compensate with more chemical inputs, which further increases external dependence.

The debates therefore proposed moving beyond the unrealistic objective of full cereal self-sufficiency in order to think in terms of genuine food sovereignty from the upstream.

This approach implies securing critical inputs, diversifying suppliers, building strategic stocks and rethinking agricultural policies in connection with energy and climate constraints.

Compensation: between social buffer and budgetary lock

The discussion on compensation showed that Tunisian subsidies cannot be reduced to a mere budgetary burden.

The compensation system constitutes at once a mechanism of social stabilisation, a historical instrument of price management and an implicit component of the Tunisian social contract.

The debates recalled that compensation has been progressively institutionalised since the 1940s in a context of provisioning, drought and price control.

Over time, it became a buffer between international prices and domestic prices.

This historical depth explains why any reform appears politically sensitive.

Compensation does not only protect consumers. It also reduces uncertainty for certain producers, notably in the bakery, cereals and processed-food sectors.

But this system also produces distortions: delays in reimbursement, the concentration of actors able to absorb administrative delays, dependence on the state and the growing opacity of real costs.

Participants stressed that an abrupt abolition of subsidies would be socially explosive.

But the absence of reform would prolong another type of adjustment: hidden inflation, shortages, degradation of product quality and the worsening of deficits.

The real challenge is therefore to move gradually from a generalised system of opaque subsidies to a targeted, legible and sustainable social protection system.

Such a reform cannot, however, succeed without social mediation, without a reliable social register and without a political strategy capable of explaining the trade-offs.

Three scenarios for the coming years

The debates converged on three possible scenarios.

The first scenario, an optimistic one, rests on a gradual stabilisation of the Middle Eastern context, an easing of energy and input prices, a limited recovery of investment and external financial support enabling certain margins of manoeuvre to be progressively restored.

This scenario remains conceivable, but it presupposes a significant improvement in economic governance, institutional coordination and the credibility of reforms.

The second scenario, considered the most probable in the short term, is one of prolonged tensions.

The economy would then continue to operate in low gear: weak growth, persistent inflation, insufficient investment, growing internal financing of the deficit and diffuse social adjustment.

In this configuration, shortages would remain occasional but recurrent, and the state would continue to prioritise incompressible expenditure at the expense of investment and the maintenance of infrastructure.

The third scenario is one of a simultaneous worsening of energy, food, budgetary and monetary constraints.

In this case, a lasting rise in energy prices combined with logistical disruptions and a weakening of the dinar could lead to major tensions: import difficulties, rapid degradation of public energy enterprises, acceleration of food inflation and the multiplication of social tensions.

Adjustment would then no longer take place through reform, but through rationing, shortages and the accelerated degradation of public services.

Towards a doctrine of economic sovereignty

What the seminar contributed to PNT's identity

The discussions revealed a shared diagnosis: the geopolitical shift has already taken place. Multilateralism is no longer a structuring framework, but an eroding system. International norms are contested or circumvented. Power relations are being reshaped around logics of raw force, regional fragmentation and generalised transactionalism. In this context, states — including those in North Africa — increasingly appear as weakened entities, caught between sovereigntist rhetoric and the effective loss of sovereignty.

This observation profoundly redefines PNT's mission. The organisation cannot situate itself either in the continuation of traditional aid frameworks or within technocratic, sectoral approaches. It positions itself as a space for the repoliticisation of contemporary issues, aiming to reintroduce the political dimension where it has been displaced by technical categories such as resilience, governance, efficiency and transition.

The exchanges also highlighted a fundamental shift in the development paradigm. International aid, historically tied to a multilateral order and to a function of projecting influence, is being transformed into a system of risk management — heavily financialised and oriented towards mobilising the private sector. This transformation is accompanied by a shift of responsibility onto local actors, without any real redistribution of capacities for action. Development thus ceases to be a project of transformation and becomes a mechanism of adaptation to exogenous constraints.

In this context, the notion of agency emerged as central. Who decides? Who acts? Who bears responsibility for transformations?

The dominant response today tends to marginalise local societies while externalising strategic decisions. PNT's specific objective is precisely to contribute to rebuilding this capacity for action, by articulating strategic reflection, critical analysis and the production of alternative frameworks.

Another major insight from the discussions concerns the need to think transitions in their plurality and interdependence. Energy transition, industrial transformation, technological mutations, geopolitical reconfigurations and social evolutions can no longer be addressed in isolation. They belong to the same historical moment, characterised by uncertainty, unpredictability and acceleration.

In such an environment, strategy can no longer be conceived as linear planning grounded in stable assumptions. It must integrate volatility, conflictuality and the possibility of abrupt ruptures. This means moving beyond managerial approaches to governance in order to reintroduce political reflection on trade-offs, priorities and trajectories.

Finally, the inaugural seminar underlined the specific role of North Africa as a strategic space. Located at the interface between Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the region concentrates the effects of global reconfigurations: the fragmentation of multilateralism, the redefinition of value chains, security tensions and the transformation of development models. It is at once a space of vulnerability and a potential laboratory for strategic recomposition.

Within this framework, PNT sees itself as an incubator for collective strategic reflection, capable of bringing together actors from different backgrounds — researchers, practitioners, decision-makers and civil-society members — in order to produce analyses rooted in regional realities while engaging with global dynamics.

The aim is not to propose immediate solutions, but to rebuild the conditions for autonomous strategic thinking — a prerequisite for any form of sovereignty, development, and ultimately, democratisation.

Synthesis of presentations and discussions

A shift that has already occurred

The roundtable organised by the Policy Network for Transitions takes place in a context marked by a profound transformation of the international system. One of the most striking observations from the discussions is that the geopolitical shift is no longer a hypothesis but a reality. The post-Cold War world — structured by multilateralism, international norms and Western hegemony — is now fading away.

Participants converge on the idea that we have entered a world characterised by fragmentation, the rise of power-based logics and the erosion of normative frameworks. This transformation affects not only international relations, but also the paradigms of development, humanitarian action and conflict management.

From post-multilateralism to post-development: repoliticising strategy in a fragmenting world

The historical moment we have entered can no longer be understood as a simple phase of gradual transition. On the contrary, the discussions converged on the idea that the shift has already occurred. We are not on the eve of a change in the international order; we are already living in the world that follows. This observation, which runs through both geopolitical analyses and reflections on development, requires us to thoroughly revise the categories that have structured international political thought in recent decades.

Multilateralism, development, governance, resilience — even democratisation itself — can no longer be invoked as self-evident truths or as neutral frameworks. They must be re-examined in light of their historical conditions of formation, their political uses and their current exhaustion.

One of the most important achievements of the discussion was precisely its refusal to treat as separate what dominant language presents as distinct domains: geopolitics on one side, development on the other; conflicts on one side, public policy on the other; systemic constraints on one side, national room for manoeuvre on the other. On the contrary, everything today points to a growing entanglement of the political, economic, technological, military and social.

The vocabulary remains that of development, cooperation or stability, even though the underlying logics are now those of power, securitisation, fragmentation and risk management.