- Raw value
- 5492.92articles per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
- History
Tunisia
Strongest usable evidence: Coordination, at 66.8. Raise Learning first, at 33.7. Shared Purpose needs more evidence: confidence is 0.26.
Raise, lowest first
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Learning | 0.55 | 33.7 |
| Building | 0.55 | 34.5 |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 41.7 |
| Trust | 0.55 | 42.0 |
| Adaptability | 0.58 | 45.0 |
Measure before managing
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Purpose | 0.26 | 49.9 |
| Experimentation | 0.40 | 18.8 |
These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.
Why this country is included: Added in the 9.0.0 completion, which takes every country of a million people or more that is measurable in all nine capabilities.
Read Tunisia beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.
- Usable or good evidence
- Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
- The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
- Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.
A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
| Coordination | 0.45 | 3 of 5 | 0.94 | no trend | 47.0 | -19.8 | |
| Agency | 0.63 | 4 of 5 | 0.85 | no trend | 38.0 | -12.6 | |
| Shared Purpose | 0.26 | 3 of 6 | 0.56 | no trend | 37.0 | -12.9 | |
| Adaptability | 0.58 | 4 of 6 | 0.94 | no trend | 40.0 | -5.0 | |
| Trust | 0.55 | 5 of 7 | 0.93 | no trend | 33.0 | -9.0 | |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 2 of 4 | 0.96 | +11.5(2) | 38.0 | -3.7 | |
| Building | 0.55 | 4 of 6 | 0.88 | +1.0(3) | 35.0 | +0.5 | |
| Learning | 0.55 | 3 of 4 | 0.81 | no trend | 35.0 | +1.3 | |
| Experimentation | 0.40 | 4 of 9 | 0.98 | +6.4(3) | 21.0 | +2.2 |
How to read this page
Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.
A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.
- direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Confidence
- very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
- thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
- usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
- good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.
Anticipation
How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
+11.5 over 10 years, from 30.2 in 2016 to 41.7 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
- Raw value
- 75.458index 0-100
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
- History
Government foresight capacity
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.
Long-horizon research commitments
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of new grants
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2019
0.75 % of GDP, rank 46 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2024
1,668 per million people, rank 43 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
912 per million people, rank 69 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Institut Tunisien des รtudes Stratรฉgiques (ITES)
Tunisia's Institut Tunisien des รtudes Stratรฉgiques, created by Law 93-103 of 25 October 1993 as a public establishment under the Presidency with a statutory mission of short and long-term prospective analysis through scenarios, reported that it prepared 50 strategic and foresight studies for the President of the Republic in 2020 to 2024, and 90 geopolitical notes in the same period.
50 studies, strategic and foresight studies prepared for the president of the republic, 2020-2024. 90 notes, geopolitical notes submitted to the president of the republic, 2020-2024. Institut Tunisien des รtudes Stratรฉgiques, activity report for the last five years 2020-2024 (Arabic, PDF), retrieved 2026-10-17.
How it worked: Parliament gave a strategic studies institute under the Presidency a statutory mission of prospective analysis and scenario building, and the institute writes studies and confidential reports addressed to the head of state, publishing a part of them.
Limits: The institute reports on itself, and both figures are its own counts in an Arabic activity report published in February 2025, read with pdftotext; the institute's website renders with JavaScript and lists the report under its publications, which is how the file was found. Most of the 50 studies went to the President and are not public: the public catalogue holds 56 items, several of them executive summaries or language versions of the same study. Many listed studies are policy analyses (public finance, the informal sector, the emigration of engineers and health workers) rather than scenario work, though several carry horizons of 2025, 2030, 2035 and 2050. The report gives no budget or staff count and no figure for any year before 2020, so the 1993 law shows the mandate's continuity across the 2011 change of regime but not continuous output. The statute (Law 93-103, Article 2) was read in the legislation database of the Tunisian security sector (https://legislation-securite.tn/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/11/Loi-n%C2%B0-93-103-du-25-Octobre-1993-Fr.pdf). The institute sits under the President's tutelage and its studies are addressed to him alone, so nothing read shows the work entering a government decision.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 38.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Hold. The statistics institute is among the better ones in the region, but planning institutions have weakened since 2021 as power concentrated in the presidency.
- 40.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Good statistics and moderate research output. Planning has weakened since 2021, which keeps me a little below the indicator.
- 38.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Statistics performance is good and research output moderate, but planning institutions weakened as power concentrated in the presidency. Foresight is undocumented.
Agency
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
- Raw value
- 1.823per 1,000 aged 15-64
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
- History
Time to start a business
direct capability measureretired, see notes- Raw value
- no datadays
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. Its successor, B-READY, publishes the time and cost to register a firm as a score, and business entry efficiency carries that construct. See D23.
- Raw value
- 92.318score 0-100
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BRE.BE.P3)
- History
- one year
- Raw value
- 3count
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
- History
Adults doing digital tasks
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.
- Raw value
- 6.2mean 1-10
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
76.5 % of population, rank 79 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
37.8 % aged 15+, rank 111 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2025
57.7 % of GDP, rank 45 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 38.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Hold. Simple entry procedures sit beside low density and very low perceived control, which is consistent with a rent-protecting licensing regime outside registration.
- 40.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Perceived control and formal density are very low, which I cannot dismiss. The large informal sector and cross-border trade are real outlets of initiative, so I stay at the top of the panel range.
- 38.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Entry is easy on paper, but business density is among the lowest and perceived control is near the floor. People do not report acting on intentions.
Coordination
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Government effectiveness
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Regulatory quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.
Logistics performance
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.
Border compliance time to export
direct capability measureretired, see notes- Raw value
- no datahours
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. B-READY trade efficiency carries the construct, the time and cost of border compliance, now reported by firms. See D23.
- Raw value
- 59.834score 0-100
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BRE.IT.P3)
- History
- one year
- Raw value
- 103.176percentage points from approved budget
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
- History
University-industry collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Innovation Index
- History
- no data
Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.
- Raw value
- 0.478index 0-1
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
- History
- one year
Public-private collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2024
3.646 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
ONAS regional sanitation concessions, and their seven-year procurement
Tunisia's national sanitation utility ONAS launched procurement of its first two ten-year regional concessions in September 2017; the south-east concession started in June 2024 and served 797,000 people by July 2026, and the North Tunis concession entered into force only on 9 July 2026 after the original consortium had to be reorganised.
797,000 people, people receiving wastewater collection and treatment from the concessionaire (south-east lot only), 2026-07. 0 agreements, concession agreements signed and effective at the june 2023 status report, against a target of two by december 2020, 2023-06-05. World Bank, Implementation Status and Results Report, Tunisia Sanitation PPP Support Project (P162957), sequence 7, 23 September 2026, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The national sanitation utility bundled the operation, maintenance and rehabilitation of whole regional networks and treatment plants into ten-year performance-based concessions, procured with IFC transaction support and paid from a World Bank loan, replacing short task-based management contracts.
Limits: The 797,000 and the North Tunis entry into force are on pages 2 and 3 of the September 2026 status report, which says the count derives from the south-east lot only and is 92 percent of that lot's end target; the end target for both lots is 2,028,000 people by July 2030. The south-east concession with SCAST was 'scheduled to start on Jun 10, 2024' in the June 2024 status report, and the 783,000 beneficiaries the September 2026 report gives for February 2026 confirm it did. The zero signed agreements against a December 2020 target are in the June 2024 status report (https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099061224041597450/pdf/P162957-61a112cc-f5f3-4ef2-ac1e-0e3c14a54b06.pdf, which also attributes the North Tunis delay to the reorganisation of the ADP-led consortium). The 2017 launch is in the project appraisal document of November 2022, paragraph 13. The World Bank finances the operators' payments through this loan (the status report lists the operation and maintenance component at a cost of 415.30, in US$ millions), so the concessions are public money paying private operators under performance contracts, not private finance, and the lender is reporting on its own project. 'People receiving services' counts the population in the concession area, not households newly connected: only 3,400 people had gained access to improved sanitation through the project by July 2026. The record shows a partnership delivered at national-utility scale but nine years after procurement began, which is as much evidence of slow delivery as of collaboration.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 46.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Hold. The panel agrees the post-2021 crackdown, Decree 54 and pressure on the UGTT have narrowed coordination outside the state; the 2013 Quartet is past capacity.
- 48.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
The National Dialogue Quartet proved deep civil coordination, but decree 54 and pressure on the UGTT have narrowed it since 2021. Budget fidelity inflates the indicator.
- 47.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Budget fidelity is high but narrow evidence. Civil society is mid-range and contracting since 2021; the 2013 Quartet shows capacity that has since been constrained.
Trust
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Rule of law
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Control of corruption
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Time to enforce a contract
direct capability measureretired, see notes- Raw value
- no datadays
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. B-READY dispute resolution efficiency carries the construct, the time and cost to resolve a commercial dispute and enforce the decision. See D23.
- Raw value
- 50.136score 0-100
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BRE.DR.P3)
- History
- one year
- Raw value
- 8.095% of firms
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
- History
- Raw value
- 1.351scale 0-4 (never to always)
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
- History
- one year
Intentional homicide rate
downstream outcomeretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataper 100,000 people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
- History
- no data
Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
- Raw value
- 13.8% agreeing
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
- History
- one year
Trust in public institutions
perception proxyno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% expressing confidence
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD Trust Survey / WVS
- History
- no data
Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.
- Raw value
- 30.6% expressing trust
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
- History
- one year
Court case clearance rate
downstream outcomeno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of incoming cases
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
- History
- no data
Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Confidence in the courtsJoint EVS/WVS (E069_17), 2022
13.8 % a great deal, higher is better. Share of survey respondents saying they have a great deal of confidence in the justice system and courts, of the four answers a great deal, quite a lot, not very much and none at all, in the Joint EVS/WVS 2017 to 2022 survey round.
Confidence in the courts is the public half of what this capability asks: whether people expect the rules to be enforced when a stranger breaks them. It is not scored because the survey answer reads two things the number cannot tell apart. Where courts are independent, confidence is a judgment of how they perform. Where they answer to the state, it is also deference, and saying otherwise to an interviewer has a cost. In this frame the pattern runs the wrong way. India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all electoral autocracies in the V-Dem 2025 classification, lead on the share saying a great deal, and Vietnam and China, the two closed autocracies surveyed, lead once quite a lot is counted too. The ten electoral autocracies average 21.8 percent saying a great deal and the two closed autocracies 28.1, against 13.6 for liberal and 8.4 for electoral democracies. Scored, it would rank highest the states whose courts are least able to rule against them. Income is not why it is left out: the share correlates about -0.18 with log GDP per capita. The value is the share saying a great deal; the share saying quite a lot is in the source note.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 31.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Hold near my first score. Low generalised trust and falling court compliance after the dissolution of the Supreme Judicial Council outweigh low firm bribery.
- 34.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Interpersonal trust is low and court compliance fell after the Supreme Judicial Council was dissolved. Low firm bribery is one favourable signal.
- 33.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Low generalised trust and weakly constrained courts outweigh low firm bribery, which is a single favourable signal. Out-group trust is mid.
Learning
How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
- Raw value
- 0.517index 0-1
- Year
- 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
- History
- Raw value
- 26.736% of firms
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
- History
Adult learning participation
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
- History
- no data
Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.
- Raw value
- 0.833ratio to world average
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2023
38.1 % gross, rank 76 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2023
6.7 % of GDP, rank 8 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 2016
9.1 % of secondary, rank 76 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Programme national d'enseignement des adultes (national adult education programme)
Tunisia's Ministry of Social Affairs, through its national adult education centre and regional coordinations, taught 16,560 adult learners in the 2021-2022 school year, 10,320 in the basic cycle and 6,240 in the completion and intensive cycles, 9,799 of them women, against a forecast of 22,710.
16,560 learners, adult learners in the national adult education programme, all governorates and cycles (annex 5), 2021-2022 school year. 22,710 learners, forecast number of learners for 2022 in the same report, 2022 (forecast). Ministere des Affaires sociales, Rapport annuel de performance 2022 (mission Affaires sociales), programme Promotion sociale, indicator 1.3.3 and Annex 5 'Distribution of learners by governorate and cycle, school year 2021/2022', retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The social affairs ministry runs a national adult education centre that hires contract teachers to give literacy and post-literacy classes in every governorate, and reports learners by governorate and cycle in its performance budget.
Limits: The ministry reports on its own programme in its annual performance report, in Arabic. The numbers sit in a PDF: the narrative on page 43 and the governorate table on page 78; the text layer of this PDF maps digits wrongly (it extracts 16.362 and 22.912), so the figures were read from the rendered pages. The count is learners enrolled in literacy (basic) and post-literacy (completion and intensive) classes, not completions, and literacy classes are only part of adult learning. Against roughly eight million Tunisian adults it is a small reach, about two learners per thousand adults, in a country whose own report puts adult illiteracy at 16.8 percent in 2022. The report attributes the shortfall against forecast to the loss of contract teachers (954 at end 2021 to 943 at end 2022) and to difficulty attracting learners, and the 2024 report still speaks of 'targeting 22 thousand beneficiaries' with 885 contract and 113 tenured teachers, so the programme has not regained its forecast scale; no earlier enrolment peak was verified, so the record is not filed as an erosion. The 2000 start is the commonly reported launch year of the national programme and was not read at the cited source.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 35.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Hold near the indicator. The system educates at mid-frame but graduate unemployment and emigration show it does not retain or update knowledge well.
- 35.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Mid-low human capital and training with slightly better citation impact. Graduate unemployment and brain drain show weak retention of knowledge, as panelist A said.
- 33.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.55
Human capital and training below the middle, citation impact modest, consistent with income. Graduate unemployment and emigration suggest weak retention of knowledge.
Experimentation
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
+6.4 over 10 years, from 9.3 in 2016 to 15.7 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
+13.6 over 20 years, from 5.8 in 2006 to 19.4 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
+15.0 over 30 years, from 4.4 in 1996 to 19.4 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
- Raw value
- 225per million people
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
- History
- Raw value
- 5317per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
- History
- Raw value
- 694per million people
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
- History
- Raw value
- 197909per million people
- Year
- 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
- History
- no data
Venture deals
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD / national VC associations
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.
Early-stage entrepreneurial activity
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no data% aged 18-64
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
- History
- no data
Note: From the GEM Adult Population Survey, entered by hand because GEM has no open API. TEA counts every new business, so necessity self-employment scores the same as a funded startup, which is why Chile and Argentina sit above the United States here. Read it as how many people are trying, not as how much value the attempts create. GEM does not run every economy every year: Singapore last took part in 2014 and the recency term marks that value down hard.
Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no data% not deterred
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
- History
- no data
Note: Stored as 100 minus the published GEM fear of failure rate, so the direction matches the rest of the registry. GEM measures that rate among adults who already see good opportunities, not among all adults, so the denominator differs from the label. Attitudinal: bankruptcy law and time to discharge would be the observable substitute and are still worth wiring beside it.
Firms through regulatory sandboxes
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no datafirms per million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national regulators
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.
University spinouts
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national TTO associations
- History
- no data
Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.
Business share of R&D
capability inputretired, see notes- Raw value
- no data% of R&D
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD MSTI / RICYT
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Banque Centrale de Tunisie regulatory sandbox, first cohort
The Banque Centrale de Tunisie launched a regulatory sandbox in January 2020, admitted four fintech solutions to its first cohort in September 2020, ran tests with real customers and partner banks for 13 months, notified exit in September 2022, and drafted a circular on digital enrolment and remote bank account opening from the results (BCT Rapport annuel 2022).
4 solutions, fintech solutions admitted to the first cohort of the bct regulatory sandbox, 2020-09. Banque Centrale de Tunisie, Rapport annuel 2020 (June 2021), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The central bank set up a fintech committee, published an access guide, selected four solutions against its own strategic priorities, exempted them from specified rules for a bounded test with partner banks, and then wrote the tested remote-onboarding practice into a banking circular.
Limits: The count is the regulator's own report of its own programme. The number does not say how many of the four completed, only that exit plans were validated. Only one regulator is covered; capital markets and insurance regulators are not. Four solutions in one cohort over 2020 to 2022 is about 0.33 admissions per million people (our computation against the World Bank's 2020 population of 11,974,057), and the record shows one cohort only.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 20.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Small move up. The 2018 Startup Act is a real institutional channel and design and software output exist, but counts stay low.
- 24.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Design and software activity are moderate and the Startup Act opened a channel. Informal trial and error is not counted, so I stay slightly above the indicator.
- 21.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Patent and design output and a large developer base are above what income alone predicts. Trademarks and entrepreneurship rates are low, funding is thin and the Startup Act is a channel but not yet a result.
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
- Raw value
- 15.108% of labour force
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
- History
- Raw value
- 63.9% of unemployed
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
- History
- one year
- Raw value
- 0.174index 0-1, lower = more diversified
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
- History
- one year
- Raw value
- 2.81% of products not exported competitively at the start
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
- History
- one year
Disaster preparedness and recovery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- INFORM / UNDRR
- History
- no data
Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.
Institutional responsiveness
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
51.1 % aged 15+, rank 115 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
15 per 100 people, rank 68 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2024
21 % of output, rank 107 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT), 2019
36.9 % of employment, rank 42 of 102. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
AMEN Social emergency transfers, 2020
After the March 2020 lockdown, Tunisia's government announced in April 2020 a vertical and horizontal expansion of the AMEN Social programme: a TND 50 top-up for two months to all 260,000 poor households, two TND 200 transfers to 450,000 vulnerable households on the subsidised health card, and a one-off TND 200 transfer to 300,000 further vulnerable households enrolled through a new simplified platform.
300,000 households, vulnerable households outside the amen social registry enrolled through a simplified platform and paid a one-off tnd 200, 2020. 450,000 households, vulnerable households on the subsidised health card paid two tnd 200 transfers, 2020. World Bank, Project Appraisal Document, Tunisia COVID-19 Social Protection Emergency Response Support Project (P176352), March 2021, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The Ministry of Social Affairs topped up existing cash-transfer beneficiaries, paid households already listed for subsidised health care, and opened a simplified enrolment platform to reach vulnerable households outside the registry.
Limits: All three figures are in paragraph 23 of a PDF (printed page 15 of 86, PDF page 21), written a year after the event by the World Bank as it prepared a loan to finance the programme's next phase; it is a lender's description, not an audit, and the counts are round numbers. The document dates the announcement to April 2020 and says the households received the transfers, but it gives no payment dates, so the speed claim rests on the month of the announcement, not on the month money arrived. The 300,000 are households the Ministry of Social Affairs enrolled through a platform it built for the crisis, a horizontal expansion; the other two groups were already known to the state. The amounts were small (TND 200 is about US$73 at the document's rate), and the transfers were one-off or two-month measures. The responsiveness rested on the AMEN Social programme and registry built since 2019 with earlier World Bank support, which the same paragraph credits.
Sfax flood protection (belt canal) after the 1982 flood
After the October 1982 flood in Sfax killed at least 70 people and destroyed about 700 houses, Tunisia's Urban Hydraulics Directorate built an eight-km belt canal and rehabilitated the city's wadi channels and dikes, completing the works in June 1988 as scheduled, and the January 1990 floods that damaged much of central and southern Tunisia did not damage the protected area.
8 km, belt canal built around greater sfax, 1988-06. 70 people, lives lost in the october 1982 sfax flood (at least), 1982-10. World Bank, Project Completion Report, Tunisia Sfax Flood Protection Project (Loan 2289-TUN), Report No. 9877, 30 August 1991, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: After a flood with an estimated 130-year return period, the urban hydraulics directorate built an intercepting canal around the city to divert runoff from the catchment above it, plus storm drains inside it, and set up a regional maintenance section.
Limits: The World Bank, which lent US$25 million (US$22.3 million disbursed), wrote the report. The belt canal length is in the project description and the completion date in the timetable table (Table 2, planned and actual June 1988); 'completed according to the original schedule' is para. 5.01. The evidence that the works protected the city is one sentence noting that the January 1990 floods did not damage the project area, which the report says was acknowledged by the press and local residents; no rainfall or discharge comparison is given, so the 1990 event may have been smaller in Sfax than 1982. The report warns that protection depends on maintenance funding without cost recovery, and recommends an impact evaluation within five years; none was read. This is a 1984 to 1988 build and says nothing about current Tunisian flood preparedness. The text is OCR of a scanned 1991 report.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 39.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Hold below the indicator. A diversified export base is offset by unemployment of 15 percent with two thirds long-term, which shows labour does not reallocate.
- 42.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Exports are diversified but unemployment is high and long-term, which shows slow labour reallocation. Informal work and migration absorb part of it.
- 40.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Diversified exports reflect an industrial base serving European firms. High, long-term unemployment shows weak labour reallocation, so I stay below the indicator.
Building
How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?
+1.0 over 10 years, from 18.4 in 2016 to 19.4 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
- Raw value
- 14.795% of GDP
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
- History
- Raw value
- 7.701% of manufactured exports
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
- History
Logistics infrastructure quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.
- Raw value
- 79.565score 0-100
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
- History
- Raw value
- 0.147index
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
- History
Large project delivery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% overrun
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.
Firm scale-up rate
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of firms
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD DynEmp
- History
- no data
Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
44,363 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 67 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Reseau Ferroviaire Rapide de Tunis, lines D and E, and its overruns
Tunisia's transport ministry and the Societe du RFR built the first two lines of the Tunis rapid rail network, about 18 km plus 28 trains, financed from December 2010; the EIB's approximate total cost for the same scheme rose from EUR 550 million at the 2009 appraisal to EUR 653 million at the 2017 appraisal, Line E opened in March 2023 and Line D on 25 January 2025, against a 2015 project study that scheduled construction of the Line E viaduct for 2014 to 2017.
653 million EUR, approximate total cost of rfr lines d and e (eib appraisal, operation 2015-0288), 2017. 550 million EUR, approximate total cost of rfr lines d and e (eib appraisal, operation 2009-0154), 2009. European Investment Bank, project summary sheet 20150288 (RESEAU FERROVIAIRE RAPIDE II), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The Ministry of Transport created a dedicated project company, the Societe du RFR, assembled a 40 percent state and 60 percent multi-donor financing package, and built the first two lines through civil works contracts while SNCFT took the operating role; when the Bardo municipality stopped the works, the company went to the administrative court and the cabinet chose a design variant in December 2023.
Limits: The cost figures are the EIB's approximate appraisal totals, not an audited out-turn: the 18.7 percent rise from 550 to 653 million EUR is our computation across two appraisals whose scope wording differs slightly (the 2017 sheet names a maintenance facility and 28 trains, the 2010 sheet only rolling stock), and in January 2025 the French Treasury still quoted a total of 550 million EUR including rolling stock, so the publishers do not agree on the out-turn. The cost is in euros and says nothing about dinar costs after the currency's depreciation. The record has no official original line-opening date: the only official schedule is a 2015 impact study placing the Line E viaduct's construction in 2014 to 2017, so the roughly six-year slip to the March 2023 Line E opening is a comparison of one structure's plan against the line's opening, not a published overrun. The EIB suspended disbursements in 2016 over construction companies' failures to implement safeguards (ESDS 18 July 2017), and works at Bardo were halted by the municipality until an administrative court annulled the stop on 29 December 2023 (EIB register 236943929), so part of the delay is litigation rather than delivery. About 60 percent of financing came from foreign lenders and French and Korean firms supplied engineering and trains. This is a city network, not a national programme, and it records poor delivery rather than good: it is evidence of the construct's weak end.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 35.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Hold. A real auto-parts and electrical manufacturing base, but low fitness and public investment execution has fallen under fiscal stress.
- 35.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
A real auto-parts and electrical manufacturing base and quick electricity connection, against low complexity and weakening public investment execution.
- 32.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Real manufacturing base and quick electricity connection, but fitness is low, high-tech exports small and public investment execution deteriorated.