Tunisia boasts a network of sectoral technical centers that constitute a national capital of skills. These centers, including laboratories, provide technical assistance, training, quality control, innovation, and expertise to local businesses. With eight centers across various industries, they have accumulated experience in diagnostics, testing, quality certification, and research and development. Their value lies not only in equipment but also in the expertise of their engineers, technicians, and experts.
The centers have the potential to offer their expertise to African economies, which are seeking technical skills and quality infrastructure to drive industrial development. African countries require investments, technical expertise, and quality infrastructure, aligning with the skills developed in Tunisia. The needs include laboratories, quality systems, standardization, continuous training, SME support, industrial diagnostics, technology transfer, and maintenance and engineering. A conference organized by the Tunisia Africa Business Council and a partnership between the council and one of the technical centers illustrate the convergence of African needs and Tunisian expertise.
However, exporting expertise is more complex than exporting products. Centers face challenges when solicited for international missions, including questions about contract ownership, invoicing, expert mobilization, and preserving expert status and social rights. These constraints can limit international initiatives. To address this, a lightweight mechanism is needed to separate international activities from centers' daily management while maintaining connections with them.
A proposed solution is the creation of a common platform, Tunisia Industrial Expertise (TIE), to pool resources, coordinate offers, and facilitate international contracts. This platform would not replace technical centers or compete with their national missions but would transform their skills into structured international offers. Its functions would include identifying market needs, presenting Tunisian offers, preparing technical and financial proposals, and coordinating administrative, financial, and legal aspects.
The experience of Steg International Services demonstrates that a dedicated structure can convert accumulated public institution expertise into international services. The proposed platform would build on this principle, adapting it to the needs of Tunisian technical centers. The goal is not to sell individual expert days but to offer comprehensive solutions, combining the skills of multiple centers around a single project.
This approach would enable Tunisian centers to provide integrated services, such as diagnostics, design, testing, equipment, procedures, training, and certification. By mobilizing several centers, they could offer African partners a multidisciplinary team rather than a series of isolated interventions. This could establish expertise as a commercial entry point, leading to trust, partnerships, projects, investments, and exports.
The international opening should not be limited to the eight technical centers but also extended to the digital sector and information and communication technologies. The Center for Studies and Research in Telecommunications could play an intermediary role between Tunisian digital skills and African needs, facilitating engineer missions abroad and establishing productive African cooperation in the field of intelligence.
Key points
- A new platform, Tunisia Industrial Expertise, could help Tunisian technical centers export their expertise to Africa.
- The centers have accumulated expertise in various fields, including diagnostics, testing, and quality certification.
- Exporting expertise poses challenges, including contract ownership and expert mobilization.
