Tunisia is regarded as a digital role-model on the African continent. Since the Arab Spring in 2011, a dynamic IT sector has emerged that already provides 113,000 jobs at 1,800 companies. Every year, 10.000 graduates in mathematics, informatics, science and engineering enter the Tunisian labour market. Tunisia provides a large talentpool of IT experts and hosts a lively startup ecosystem. Yet unemployment remains high, especially among young people, women and university graduates. The public administration also needs to be reformed to support economic growth and to provide efficient access to government services.
The challenges for Tunisia lie in combating high unemployment, ensuring the global competitiveness of Tunisian companies and modernizing the administration. Digitalization holds great potential for overcoming these challenges.
The Tunisian government has put the digitalization of the private and public sector already very high on the political agenda. This is illustrated by the national digital strategy and the Startup Act, a legal framework to promote the dynamic local startup ecosystem.
Since 2019 The Digital Transformation Center in Tunisia acts as an important partner for the Tunisian government and supports the Ministry of Communications Technologies as well as the Ministry for Industry, Mines and Energy in implementing the national digital strategy and a strategy dedicated to support the digital transformation of Tunisia´s industry. The Digital Transformation Center addresses the Tunisian challenges of high unemployment and a very complex administration in two areas, focusing on the private and public sector.
To boost economic growth and employment in the promising digital sector with its well-educated talent pool, the Digital Transformation Center supports
In addition, the Digital Transformation Center contributes to the digitalization of the administration by
The Dot is a physical space and platform, where the whole Tunisian ecosystem meets. Each year 15 promising startups are hosted in The Dot and profit from specific support regarding legal consultation, access to finance and recruitment. The Digital Transformation Center hosts at The Dot its AI Hub, the Mobile Innovation Hub as well as the Business Facility Desk and its Nearshoring Services for international investors.
The latest international partner to cooperate with the Tunisian tech ecosystem is Siemens. In particular, they will work togehter with the AI company Instadeep, which is already working with BionTech and Deutsche Bahn..
Although Tunisia counts already a lot of IT talents, additional trainings in future proof IT skills are still essential for graduates and experts. IT companies play a crucial role in defining and in training those skills. In cooperation with the number one Cloud-Service Amazon Web Services, students were trained as certified cloud architects. Within the project DigitalWorks 38 Tunisian IT companies train their junior experts in alteration with eight universities in practical tech skills.
A big part in training experts plays the Industry4.0 initiative. In two competence centers in Sousse and Sfax Tunisia´s industry joins science to develop and test smart solutions by using technologies such as AI or 3D printing. The role of these centers is to support the digital transformation of SMEs in their digital transformation and to move towards smart factories.
With its tech ability and with support of the Digital Transformation Center the Tunisian Health Ministry launched a vaccination platform for the whole family. Anyone interested simply has to register using their identity card, after which they can make appointments, receive reminders and then obtain a digital vaccination record. Users’ data is stored securely on local servers and is anonymized and encrypted before being shared with the Ministry of Public Health. That helps the ministry to keep a real-time overview of the distribution of medical products across the country and helps the administration recognize rising outbreaks of illnesses, for example if higher demand is seen. This means that vaccines and medications are more readily available as a result of smart logistics.
