Investors

Telecom

A unique infrastructure in Africa

Tunisia has for a long time attached a great importance to its telecommunication infrastructure which constitutes one of the most modern in the Mediterranean basin and Africa. As a result its telecommunication network which covers its entire territory, has multifunction high band switches which provide telephone transfer, internet and multimedia.

Tunisia is also the only country in North Africa to be connected to all its neighboring countries and to have optical fibre submarine connections to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and America.

Tunisia is ranked first in Africa in terms of telephone density and number of PCs per capita and it is rated first in North Africa with regard to the access to ICT index, according to a World Bank study.

An exemplary telecoms infrastructure

In term of telecoms infrastructure, Tunisia has:

An internet network covering the entire country, accessible through 11 internet service providers (6 public and 5 private).
Access to international bandwidth of 82.5 Gbytes/s.
A network of data transmission using various technologies: LS, ADSL, Frame Relay, VSAT…

Technoparks

Technological parks

To support the development of companies and the launch of businesses with strong added value in terms of innovation, Tunisia established an ambitious program for the development of 10 technological parks. This program currently comprises three parks specializing in ICT:

Data processing and multimedia in Sfax;
Data processing and electronics in Sousse; and
Communication technologies in Tunis, in addition to an ICT component in all the other parks (bio-informatics).

This environment has fostered synergies between industry, research and educational universities. The technological parks have also promoted the emergence and development of innovative foreign and Tunisian companies.

The first technological park dedicated to ICT in Tunisia and North Africa, was Elgazala Technopole, which began its activities at the end of the Nineties. It accommodates over 90 companies employing 1650 people including 98% who are graduates. It also exports 75% of site production. Elgazala Technopole hosts some of the most prestigious multinationals such as Alcatel, Ericsson, Huwai Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Stone Soft and Kromberg Shubert.In order to meet an unceasing demand, two additional sites will be annexed to Elgazala Technopole: Ennahli on 36 hectares and Manouba on 54 hectares. The first section of 100,000 m ² of offices will be available at the beginning of 2010.

Poles of competitiveness

Eight sectoral poles of national competence or regional competitiveness have been implemented to widen the sphere of activity of the technological parks and to reinforce the potential of sectoral innovation, clustering, the development of technological partnerships and for the support of company creation.

Cyber parks

A network of cyber parks dedicated to on-line services covers the entire republic. This network consisted of 15 cyber parks and more are planned.

An intelligent real infrastructure

The technological parks and cyber parks are equipped with a modern ICT infrastructure as well as first class buildings.
Apart from the technology parks and cyber parks, Tunisia also has an important modern housing stock comprised of smart modern buildings at very competitive prices and able to accommodate activities relating to ICT activities and services (e.g. call centers, BPO).