And now for some rural Tunisia

Yesterday I promised you some further insights into Tunisia by showing you a bit of the countryside outside of the capital city Tunis and briefly introducing you to the people. And I'll tell you about their food! This was one of my favourite projects of my career, since I got the chance, as an infrastructure engineer, to figure out how and why a whole programme had worked and how Africa could learn from the experience. And did I mention food?

Caveat emptor on the photographs

The meagre showing of photographs in this post is all I have left after preparing a draft report for the African Development Bank on best practices in African infrastructure development which never got published, mainly due to changes at executive level at the Bank and restructuring which ended up affecting our direct client. Since it wasn't published, and I took the photographs, there shouldn't be an attribution issue with these images. In any case, I only had a few left, as after a day of searching my files, I have to conclude I must have left the originals at my old company. That's a way of apologising in advance for the quality of some of these images!

This collage gives you an idea of what the countryside in northern Tunisia looks like in spring. There were wildflowers everywhere we looked, lots of olive groves and vegetable farming.

A bit about Tunisia

Tunisia is the smallest country in North Africa in terms of area. The geography of the country is a combination of coastal lowlands, ranging south through fertile rolling hills and mountainous areas, to the northern Sahara in the far south of the country. It's dry and mountainous in the western interior as well. Rural households in Tunisia are scattered in loose, isolated agglomerations. A typical rural household may also incorporate several related families. The map below gives you a sense of the geography of the country. There are some big lakes in Tunisia.

Today's post will mention the two big bodies of water at the northern tip of the country, in the area known as Bizerte.

First President's Vision

The first president of the republic, Habib Bourguiba, had a vision to improve the economic and social conditions of the people through a quantum leap in education, health care and integrated rural development. One of his quotes that really struck me was

"Je préfère gouverner un peuple éduqué que de diriger des masses ignorantes",

which I've translated as

"I would rather govern an educated population than order around ignorant masses".
He had a particularly strong interest in women's rights and implemented many reforms in the early years of his presidency, including the abolishment of polygamy, the introduction of the right to divorce, and establishing women's right to vote. Bourguiba also had a deep-seated conviction in the power of education to transform the country. Prior to independence most Tunisian women were illiterate, so the education programme under the first republic emphasised education for girls.

Fast Facts about Tunisia

Here are some "fast facts" to show you how the country advanced over just a few decades.

I used that photo because, although it's one that didn't survive my move from my old company and I had to take a picture of a hard copy, it gives you some idea of the lushness of the landscape in spring, and why my jaw dropped at each new view around every new bend.

I was there to look at their rural electrification programme

Specifically, I was there to understand why it had been such a wild success, given that at the time (~2007) still more than two thirds of Africans did not have access to electricity. What made Tunisia different?

Some technical background and context - hang in there

Tunisia's rural electrification programme has its roots in the integrated rural development vision of the country. I was deeply impressed at the time at the way that the government managed to make top-down planning by the national government in collaboration with the utility STEG (la Société Tunisienne de l'Electricité et du Gaz, or Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company) meet bottom-up consultation at village level work. It was like an iterative knitting process - plan at national level, inform through local government structures, get feedback from local population, use feedback to adapt national level programme - over many years, and it worked.

How do we know it worked? Did you see their access to electricity by 2006 compared to 1974 in that Fast Facts picture? Wow! That means almost the whole country went from not having any access to electricity to nearly the whole country, even deep rural areas, having the opportunity to plug in a kettle and watch TV.

Yup, a bit more technical stuff - it'll be over soon

The rural electrification programme was conceived as part of the vision to improve the living standards of Tunisia's rural population in line with the pillars of rural development. The integrated nature of this vision strongly informed its translation into goals and action plans. These were:

• Education
  • development of human resources and legal rights
  • a third of the annual national budget was reserved for basic education targeted at both
    boys and girls
• Health
  -improved health services
  -dispensaries with trained medical staff provided
  in even the most rural of areas
  -focus on vaccination and family planning
• Social
  • liberation of women
• Infrastructure
  • rural electrification
  • provision of potable water
  • development of rural roads

Hurry up and get to the countryside, already!

We stayed in the capital city of Tunis (which I briefly described in yesterday's post) and took a day's road trip to the coastal area of Bizerte, which you can see from the map below is a pretty straightforward drive on good paved roads.

Image credit

Specifically, I went to Bizerte and some of the nearby inland villages with a filmmaker colleague and his assistant so we could see the impact that the rural electrification programme had had on rural people. It was one of the areas where people had been given a choice, based on cost, between access to grid electricity (from wires strung across the countryside), which they'd have to wait for, or more immediate solar photovoltaic (PV) power from panels installed on their roofs. Remember, this was 2007 and only a few people had heard of Elon Musk and solar PV! This was groundbreaking stuff at the time.

The villages we saw in Bizerte were really tiny, typically a few dozen houses clustered around a mosque. Here's a sea view I managed to salvage, giving you a bit of a view of the coastline (I'm not sure what that town is), with the lovely electrical system in the foreground.

We also saw a lot of agricultural production.

Introducing some of the people we met that day

So friendly! So welcoming! We interviewed schoolteachers, villagers, families and curious passers-by. They apparently spoke Bedouin languages first, Arabic second and perhaps French third. Our STEG guide, a charming gentleman, translated into French for me and I translated into English for the two South Africans filming.

These two gents were really curious about me and laughed their heads off at whatever our STEG guide must have told them about me. Glad to brighten someone's day!

This woman was really happy that thanks to her electricity connection, she didn't have to suffocate breathing diesel fumes whenever she went to turn on the irrigation pump.

This woman was proud to show us that she could now plan meals for her family, as she could freeze meat and didn't have to travel into the village every day to get fresh food.

Oh my goodness, these girls were happy to have a tap. Apparently it had been installed within the last week or month (hard to tell sometimes with translation between three languages). Anyway, they figured their lives were better now they could have drinking water from a wall at their home instead of a well far from home.

What amazed us about all the people we met was the beautiful colour and texture of their skin.

And of course, they fed us

The rural Tunisians we met were incredibly hospitable, insisting we sit with their families and have some traditional food with them. The meal we had consisted of a large unleavened pancake, surprisingly tasty, with a choice of honey or fresh olive oil to dip it in, fresh orange segments and piles of olives. Delicious!

Hoping to go back someday

As you can imagine, I'm keen to go back. I hope this little snippet gave you at least some idea of what rural Tunisia has to offer.