Tunisia:
A Marginalized
Solar Giant

The war in Ukraine, followed by escalating tensions in the Middle East, have profoundly altered regional energy equilibria. Europe is now seeking to reduce its dependence on Russian supplies, diversify its import sources, and accelerate its decarbonization.

In this context, countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean occupy a new strategic position. Algeria has re-emerged as 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 is positioning itself as the primary energy platform linking Africa and Europe.

Tunisia, despite being situated at the heart of this space, appears largely absent from this realignment. This marginalization is not the product of geographic determinism. It results from political choices, institutional delays, and—more fundamentally—from 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, the country benefited from its geographic position between Algeria and Italy through the Transmed pipeline, which links Algeria's Hassi R'Mel gas fields to the European market.

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

Primary energy production has fallen from approximately 8.3 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the early 2010s to less than 3.5 million today. Meanwhile, national consumption has continued to rise, driven by population growth, urbanization, and increasing industrial demand. According to the National Observatory of Energy and Mines, the energy deficit now exceeds 65% of national needs1.

This trajectory represents a major strategic shift. Tunisia is no longer an energy-producing country benefiting from a transit rent. It has become an importing country dependent on the very energy corridor it hosts on its own territory. 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. Over 90% of the country's electricity production relies on natural gas. A significant portion of this gas is imported directly or indirectly from its Algerian neighbor2.

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 possesses multiple 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.

This situation directly exposes the country to shifts in international markets. Algerian gas contracts are generally indexed to oil prices with periodic revision mechanisms. A sustained rise in oil prices therefore mechanically translates into higher energy procurement costs. Tensions around the Strait of Hormuz or disruptions in global markets can thus produce significant effects on Tunisian public finances, even when physical supplies remain uninterrupted.

Energy dependence thereby becomes systemic dependence. It affects not only electricity generation, but also agriculture, transport, industry, and the state's fiscal balance.

This dependence comes at a time 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 position. Rome aims to become Europe's primary energy hub by leveraging its interconnections with North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Algeria has re-emerged as a major strategic partner in this regard. 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 early on as a tool for economic and diplomatic projection. The creation of MASEN, the development of the Noor complex, and massive investments in green hydrogen reflect a long-term vision linking energy, industry, and foreign policy3. Egypt follows a comparable logic, combining gas exploitation, regional infrastructure, and renewables development.

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

Faced with the progressive depletion of national fossil resources, solar energy often appears as a strategic given for Tunisia. The numbers seem to make the case.

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 southern Tunisia—among the highest levels in the Mediterranean basin. Certain zones in Tataouine, Kébili, or Tozeur benefit from potential superior to that of most European regions that have nonetheless built world-class photovoltaic industries1.

Yet the existence of a resource does not guarantee its conversion into economic or geopolitical power. Development history abounds with examples of countries richly endowed with natural resources that never managed to translate them into industrial capacity or strategic influence. Tunisia's solar potential risks encountering the same difficulty today.

Mastery of value chains

The national debate tends to reduce the energy transition to a question of installed capacity. How many megawatts to build? How much foreign investment to attract? How much electricity to feed into the grid? These questions matter but remain secondary. The real question concerns 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 industrial base capable of producing the strategic components required for the energy transition. Projects currently under development rely essentially on imported technologies, international financing, and foreign operators. Under these conditions, increasing renewable electricity output does not automatically translate into industrial empowerment.

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 regions for the future supply of decarbonized molecules needed for the transformation of its industry.

From the European perspective, this strategy is rational. Countries on the Mediterranean's southern shore enjoy abundant sunshine, available land, and geographic proximity to European markets. Producing green hydrogen in Tunisia or Morocco may appear more competitive than doing so in northern Europe.

However, this logic raises an essential question for producing countries: what role will they actually be assigned in this new energy economy? The risk is the emergence of a new international division of energy labor, in which European countries would retain mastery over technologies, financing, innovation, and markets, while southern countries 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 characterized exchanges between the two shores of the Mediterranean. The sun would replace hydrocarbons or agricultural commodities as the exported resource, but the overall structure of dependence would remain unchanged.

Historical experience demonstrates that infrastructure does not automatically produce development. Pipelines, ports, industrial zones, and mines become engines of economic transformation only when they are embedded within a coherent national strategy. Without this, they can instead reinforce existing patterns of dependence. Tunisia's real challenge is therefore not merely to integrate into the global energy transition: it is to avoid occupying a peripheral position within it.

These difficulties ultimately point to a deeper problem. Tunisia's energy vulnerability is not merely the product of resource scarcity or financial constraints. It also reflects a progressive weakening of the state's strategic capacity.

For over a decade, Tunisia appears to have lost part of its ability to think in the long term. Successive governments have been primarily consumed by the management of fiscal emergencies, political crises, and social tensions. Structural choices have been continually postponed.

The energy sector perfectly illustrates this dynamic. The early warning signs of depletion at legacy fields had been identified long ago. The growing dependence on imported gas was well known. Diversification needs had been documented in numerous national and international reports. Yet strategic decisions have often been delayed or fragmented2.

This stands in contrast to trajectories observed elsewhere in the region. Morocco established a dedicated agency to steer the energy transition as early as 2010. Egypt embedded its energy projects within a long-term regional strategy. Even Algeria, despite the limitations of its rentier model, has preserved planning capacity that enables it to negotiate directly with major European powers.

This crisis of the strategic state is also evident in the management of transit infrastructure. Transmed has crossed Tunisian territory for over forty years. Yet the country still lacks significant gas storage capacity, a regional gas market, or trading activities capable of leveraging this geographic position3.

The central question then becomes a political one. Will Tunisia's energy transition simply 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 capacity to recover a strategic function.

Tunisia's energy debate is often trapped in an artificial opposition between openness and sovereignty. On one side, some argue that attracting foreign investment is the only viable solution to the energy crisis. On the other, sovereignist rhetoric regularly denounces the concessions granted to international operators and the resulting dependencies. This opposition is misleading.

Energy sovereignty does not mean energy autarky. No country, including among the major powers, is entirely self-sufficient in the energy domain. Interdependencies have become a structural feature of the global economy. True sovereignty lies in the capacity to organize these interdependencies rather than to endure them.

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

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

Yet the Mediterranean is today entering a new historical phase. Energy infrastructure, electrical interconnections, hydrogen corridors, and decarbonization technologies are redrawing regional hierarchies. Countries that manage to align these transformations with a strategic vision will strengthen their autonomy and influence. The others risk becoming mere transit spaces or production zones in the service of strategies conceived elsewhere.

Tunisia still possesses considerable assets: an exceptional geographic position, solar potential among the highest in the region, proximity to European markets, and a long tradition of technical expertise. But these resources will not produce any automatic advantage. The true challenge is therefore not an energy challenge. It is a strategic one. It consists of rebuilding a state capable of thinking in the long term, coordinating public policies, and defining a place for Tunisia in the post-carbon Mediterranean that is now emerging.