The headlines are loud, predictable, and entirely wrong. Turn on any international news broadcast covering Tunisia right now, and you will hear the same exhausted script: rolling blackouts spark street anger, citizens rage against authoritarian overreach, and the national grid is framed as the latest casualty of political failure.
It is a lazy narrative built for foreign correspondents who drop into Tunis for forty-eight hours, stare at a stalled traffic light, and blame the sitting administration for a broken generator. For a more detailed analysis into similar topics, we recommend: this related article.
I have watched analysts diagnose Tunisia through this same tired political lens for years, completely missing the mechanical reality staring them in the face. The power cuts plunging neighborhoods into darkness are not a symptom of sudden executive tyranny. They are the overdue, mathematically inevitable invoice for three decades of subsidized denial.
Stop blaming the presidency for physics. The grid is collapsing because the country ran out of other people's money to subsidize state-owned energy inefficiency. To get more context on this issue, extensive reporting can be read on The Guardian.
The Consensus Lie
The mainstream consensus goes like this: Tunisia's electricity crisis is a direct result of democratic backsliding, centralized decision-making, and economic mismanagement under Kais Saied. The solution offered by the international commentariat is equally formulaic: restore traditional parliamentary checks, secure an IMF loan, and magically restart the economy.
This argument falls apart the moment you look at the balance sheets of the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas, known locally as STEG.
STEG is bleeding capital. For decades, successive governments kept consumer electricity prices artificially low to buy social peace. They funded the gap by borrowing externally and delaying infrastructure maintenance. When global energy prices spiked, the state treasury could no longer cover the deficit.
The blackouts are not an arbitrary punishment inflicted by an iron-fisted ruler. They are the physical rationing of unpayable imports.
Imagine a household running its air conditioning on a credit card that has been maxed out for twenty years. Eventually, the bank cuts the line. The lights go out. You can scream at the landlord all you want, but the landlord did not cause the debt. They are just the person holding the door when the electricity gets shut off.
The Anatomy of State-Managed Shortages
To understand why the protests miss the mark, we have to look past the political theatre in Avenue Habib Bourguiba and examine the mechanics of energy economics in North Africa.
Tunisia produces a fraction of the hydrocarbon resources of its neighbors, Algeria and Libya. It relies heavily on imported natural gas to feed its power plants, much of it sourced from neighboring pipelines or purchased on volatile spot markets. When foreign currency reserves dwindle, the central bank has to choose between importing wheat, medical supplies, or natural gas.
That is not a political choice. That is triage.
Yet, public discourse treats electricity as a fundamental human right disconnected from cost or supply chains. When the state attempts to pass on even a fraction of the real cost to consumers, public unions mobilize, protests erupt, and the reform package dies on arrival.
I have seen energy ministers across the developing world walk into negotiations knowing that any adjustment to utility tariffs will trigger riots, leading to their swift dismissal. It is a structural trap. The public demands European-style energy reliability backed by Soviet-style price controls. Economics does not care about your political preferences. You cannot defy supply and demand indefinitely just because you sign petitions in the public square.
The IMF Mirage
Whenever the power cuts make international news, financial markets and multilateral lenders offer the same prescription: sign the International Monetary Fund deal.
Let us be brutally honest about what that deal actually entails. The IMF does not possess a magic wand that generates electrons. Their structural adjustment programs require cutting public sector wages, freezing hiring, and removing state subsidies on basic goods and energy.
If the Tunisian government implements the exact reforms demanded by foreign lenders overnight, the price of electricity will skyrocket instantly. The protests over rolling blackouts will look quaint compared to the social explosion triggered by bills tripling overnight.
The opposition wants the West to believe that opposing the current administration will somehow unlock a torrent of cheap, reliable energy. It is a fantasy. No matter who sits in the presidential palace, the underlying math remains identical: Tunisia imports too much, produces too little, and has spent generations punishing private sector investment in alternative energy generation.
The Real Fix Hides in Plain Sight
If we strip away the emotional rhetoric of democratic decline and authoritarian capture, the path forward requires abandoning the social contract of the past fifty years.
First, the state must aggressively deregulate renewable energy production. For decades, STEG maintained a stranglehold on electricity generation, legally barring independent power producers from feeding clean energy directly into the grid at scale. Solar and wind potential in the Tunisian interior is world-class, yet bureaucratic gatekeeping has turned green transition into a slow-motion administrative crawl.
Second, universal energy subsidies must end. Blanket price supports disproportionately benefit the wealthy who consume the most power, while draining the public purse. The correct approach is direct, targeted cash transfers to vulnerable households, allowing the price of electricity to reflect its true economic cost. This incentivizes conservation and creates immediate market signals for efficiency.
Third, regional integration must supersede nationalist posturing. Tunisia’s grid should be deeply wired into broader Mediterranean and African energy corridors, allowing for dynamic load-sharing rather than relying on an isolated, fragile national loop.
None of these solutions are politically popular. None of them will fit neatly into a ten-second soundbite on evening news segments about civil unrest.
The protesters in the streets are understandably furious. Living without air conditioning in the dead of summer while food prices climb is a miserable reality. But directing that fury at the palace while demanding the preservation of the very economic distortions that caused the crisis is a compounding error.
The blackouts are a diagnostic tool. They reveal the absolute exhaustion of a rent-seeking economic model that traded long-term solvency for short-term quiet. Until Tunisia confronts the hard math of its energy balance sheet, the lights will stay off, no matter who holds the title of president.
