Tunisia cannot build its next chapter with institutions designed for another age. Giving young people genuine influence over decisions is now an economic and political necessity, writes Dr Nizar Chaari
Key points:
- Tunisia’s institutions are struggling to match a faster-moving generation
- Migration reflects lost confidence as well as economic hardship
- Youth participation must move from consultation to shared responsibility
TUNISIA is approaching a turning point that cannot be understood only through the language of political crisis, public debt or institutional tension. Beneath those pressures, a deeper shift is already under way: a generation is moving faster than the structures meant to govern it.
Young Tunisians are connected, outward-looking and comfortable with technology. They work across networks, learn new skills online and expect institutions to respond with greater speed.
Yet much of the state still operates through hierarchy, paper trails and slow validation.
That mismatch is becoming one of Tunisia’s central political and economic problems.
Institutions built for another rhythm
The issue is not simply that young people distrust government. Too many public institutions still function in ways that make initiative difficult.
A young entrepreneur can have a strong idea and still spend months navigating approvals. A graduate can have the right skills and still find that seniority matters more than ability. A local association can understand its community and still struggle to influence decisions made far above it.
Tunisia has educated, digitally capable young people, but many systems around them were designed for a slower, more centralised age. In too many places, information travels downwards more easily than ideas travel upwards.
A ministry that treats digital reform as simply putting forms online reproduces old bureaucracy on a screen. An institution that equates competence with title or age will eventually lose talented people who know they can advance faster elsewhere.
Tunisia does not lack human capital. It struggles to convert that capital into influence, opportunity and trust.
Migration is also a verdict
This is why the migration debate needs to change.
Young Tunisians do not leave only because salaries are higher elsewhere. Income matters, but many are also searching for something less tangible: a sense of trajectory.
They want to know that effort can lead somewhere.
A temporary job scheme may ease pressure, but it cannot convince a talented graduate to stay if that person believes advancement depends more on connections or patience than performance.
Brain drain therefore becomes more than an economic problem. It becomes a measure of institutional credibility.
When a skilled Tunisian decides that a career abroad offers a clearer route from effort to progress, the country loses future talent and leadership.
Irregular migration sits at the most painful end of the same problem. It is often discussed mainly as a security or border-management issue. But when a young person accepts extraordinary risk because no path at home appears credible, we should ask what failed long before the coast was reached.
Tunisia should not try to stop mobility. Young people should study, work and build networks abroad if they choose.
The goal should be to make leaving a choice rather than an escape.
Stop consulting youth after decisions
Governments across the region have become comfortable with the language of youth inclusion.
There are youth forums, councils and consultations. But young people can tell when their presence is symbolic.
Real participation begins earlier.
If a municipality is setting development priorities, young people should be involved before budgets are fixed. If a ministry is redesigning a public service, users should help shape it before launch. If universities produce promising ideas, there should be a route for those ideas to be tested in public policy rather than praised at an event and forgotten.
That is the difference between consultation and co-creation.
Co-creation means sharing part of the drafting process and accepting that expertise does not sit only inside government.
The state must still govern. But modern institutions need to absorb intelligence from outside their walls.
Tunisia’s young professionals and civic organisers already possess knowledge the state needs. The question is whether institutions will use it.
Reform the machinery
Declining public confidence cannot be fixed by better communication alone.
No campaign can persuade an entrepreneur that a system is efficient if approvals still take months. No slogan about opportunity can reassure a graduate who sees no fair route into responsibility.
The machinery itself has to improve.
Tunisia should accelerate single-window digital services, open more public data and bring young technologists and professionals directly into administrative reform.
Digitalisation should not mean turning a paper form into a PDF. It should mean removing steps that no longer serve a purpose.
The same applies to public-sector careers. Transparent promotion criteria, fixed-term fellowships and secondments into real decision-making roles could help close the ‘trajectory gap’ that pushes younger professionals to look elsewhere.
People are more likely to remain inside a system when they can see how they can move through it.
Give the regions more room
Tunisia’s generational challenge is also geographical.
Talent exists far beyond Tunis, but opportunity remains too concentrated.
Young people in Sfax, Kairouan, Kasserine, Gafsa, Gabès, Tataouine and elsewhere should not have to conclude that ambition requires relocation to the capital or departure from the country.
Regional development should be treated as a talent policy as much as an infrastructure policy.
Universities can play a larger role. Student projects and research need clearer routes into municipal and regional programmes. Small pilot funds could allow promising ideas to be tested locally before governments decide whether to scale them.
Local youth bodies should also have defined mandates and, where possible, modest budgets tied to measurable outcomes.
If young people are asked to help solve a real problem — transport, waste, digital access, tourism or local enterprise — and are judged on results, they become partners rather than an audience.
Reconnect the diaspora
Tunisia also underuses one of its greatest assets: Tunisians abroad.
The diaspora is often discussed through remittances. Yet Tunisians abroad also bring expertise, professional networks, investment knowledge and access to markets.
Tunisia could connect diaspora professionals more systematically with universities, public projects and young entrepreneurs. Mentorship networks, investment vehicles and short-term public assignments could turn a loose relationship into a development asset.
A country worried about brain drain should not think only about preventing departure. It should build systems that allow knowledge to circulate back.
Migration does not have to end the relationship between a citizen and the country.
Bad institutions can.
A new generational bargain
None of these reforms will succeed if treated as isolated youth initiatives.
The deeper change must be cultural.
Tunisia needs institutions that are more comfortable with feedback, more willing to test ideas and less suspicious of initiative that comes from outside traditional hierarchies.
That will be uncomfortable. Institutions built around control rarely change easily.
But the alternative is to keep asking one of the country’s most capable generations to adapt to systems increasingly detached from the way people live and work.
Young Tunisians are not rejecting their country.
Many are rejecting the feeling that nothing moves.
That distinction matters because it means the situation is not hopeless. Frustration can still become participation if institutions create credible ways for people to contribute.
Tunisia retains strong educational traditions, a vibrant civil society, entrepreneurial talent and an influential diaspora.
What it needs now is the confidence to allow a new generation to help shape what comes next.
The choice is not between experienced institutions and impatient youth. Tunisia needs both.
Experience gives a country memory. Youth gives it movement.
Tunisia’s next chapter will be written one way or another. The wiser course is to make sure the people who will live longest with its consequences are not standing outside the room when the first lines are drafted.
Dr Nizar Chaari writes on governance, youth policy and institutional reform in Tunisia and Africa. He is the founder of EPIK Leaders and Groupe Tunivision