DOUZ, Tunisia — Sabry Ben Ibrahim knows that Tunisia can shine. That’s why he sees solar power’s potential everywhere.
Ibrahim heads the municipal council in Douz, a small town in southern Tunisia, where the sun brightly beats down with little break. Tunisia’s interior, non-coastal communities are historically underdeveloped compared to the North African country’s coastal capital and beachfront tourist centers. Here agriculture, like growing dates, and tourism, including an annual date festival, keep the economy alive.
Solar power “could be the third largest sector,” Ibrahim says. Already the modest highways that cut through the sun-soaked south are lined with solar-powered light. In Douz, a government agency to promote agriculture provides subsidies for farmers to power their wells with solar energy. Another project in partnership with the state-run energy agency offers discounts for homes that heat water with solar panels.
“We have everything to do everything,” Ibrahim says.
That’s why he’s frustrated that a different government project to develop vocational training for solar power projects hasn’t progressed. He sees that related to a larger gulf between the promise and actual investment in local capacity. Instead, Parliament has tailored legislation to attract international investors to build one of Africa’s largest solar power plants just a few towns away and to export the energy to Europe — all while Tunisia faces its own power shortages.
The Tunisian government, which invested $1 billion in renewable energy in 2017, says it plans to eventually have 30 percent of the country’s energy come from renewable sources, compared to the less than 6 percent now.
The project’s proponents say the plant will generate thousands of jobs and increase foreign investment to economically depressed Tunisia and promote a greener energy alternative in line with the Paris accord. Its critics question the model of having another natural resource extracted, sold and consumed by a foreign company and countries rather than remain in control of the Tunisian people.
It’s a debate playing out across North Africa, where other countries such as Morocco and Egypt are similarly moving to expand their solar power potential. While all stakeholders are focused on how to harness the green profits, others are also weary of resulting resource inequalities and conflicts, like those that plague oil. Poor infrastructure has hurt development, as well. Roughly 2.1 percent of African countries’ gross domestic product has been lost to the power sectors’ poor access, soaring costs and the unreliability of projects, according to the World Bank.
Ibrahim says Tunisia, a former French colony, can have it both ways: Export the solar power and have the Tunisian government do it. He has an idea for creating his company to produce solar panels, if only there was enough investment.
Plans to build the Saharan solar power plant started in the mid-2000s — back before the 2011 Tunisian revolution, which ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the first wave of the Arab Spring. Seven years later, Tunisians have a representative democracy and can discuss politics with little fear or repercussion. Still, major roadblocks and battles remain. The economy has struggled to regain its pre-revolution confidence, with unrest, terrorism and the growing pains of political change further complicating progress.
This year kicked off with countrywide protests over austerity measures, backed by the International Monetary Fund, which curbed government spending and cut subsidies to everyday food and energy staples, including gasoline. Formal unemployment is currently around 12 percent.
Tunisia desperately needs foreign currency reserves and jobs, say experts — both of which the mega-project being planned by TuNur, a London-based solar developer, is set to provide. TuNur’s idea is to create 4.5 Gigawatt solar power plant that can pipe electricity to Malta, Italy, France and perhaps the United Kingdom with its own project via submarine cables. TeNur, which is backed by Tunisian and Maltese investors, has already spent more than $12 million on the project.
Daniel Rich, the chief operating officer, says TuNur initially chose Tunisia because of its sunny location, which made the route technologically feasible, and its conducive regulatory framework and reputation as a good place to do business. They’ve stuck with it, even despite the revolution’s roller coasters.
“It creates new jobs, new economic revenues, new opportunities,” says Rich of the benefits for Tunisia. “It’s bringing more investment and lenders into the country. It’s bringing more technological exchanges. … We are prepared to take the investments to open the market.”
Rich estimated that in total 700 Tunisian companies could become part of the project’s supply chain, which among construction, operation and other indirect opportunities could generate 20,000 jobs. Five to 10 percent of the solar power produced would also be set aside for domestic use, he says.
Worries Over ‘Energy Colonialism’
All that glosses over the larger issues of energy democratization and resource exploitation for critics like Hamza Hamouchene, senior program officer for North Africa and West Asia at the London-based War on Want organization.
“It’s just another case of energy colonialism,” Hamouchene says. “All of these projects are designed with European interests in mind.”
For Hamouchene, part and parcel to the problem are the neoliberal economic policies that the Tunisian government champions in what hasn’t been a break from Ben Ali’s corrupt past. Hamouchene criticizes decades of Tunisian oil contracts with international companies, which he says reap the benefits at the expense of everyday Tunisians. Protests over this issue erupted in southern Tunisia in 2017.
“If they are really interested in creating jobs, there are other ways than giving land to British and Italian and other Tunisian investors,” Hamouchene says. “Why don’t you do energy for local consumption? Why export it? That’s the contradiction.”
The former’s been the approach of nearby Morocco, whose constitutional monarchy weathered through the region’s revolutionary fervor. Morocco is now successfully expanding its own pricey Saharan solar power plant that’s initially only for domestic consumption. The Moroccan king owns the plant, which a Spanish company is building and the European Union is helping to fund.
Morocco’s domestic-focused model still faces some similar challenges to Tunisia, such as worries over excessive water use in the already water-stressed Sahara and job creation estimates falling short for the local residents. Similar projects in sunny Egypt, on the other hand, have struggled to get off the ground.
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