Written by Aarti Shahani | From NPR
This Sunday, Tunisia — the country that gave birth to Arab Spring — will elect a Parliament. Millions of citizens will vote at the polls, and thousands will run for office.
It’s a sea change since the days of ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. But behind the political gains, there is a sad fact: The new democracy is at an economic standstill. The technology sector — which many say could deliver jobs to unemployed young people — is victim to political inertia.
Startups In A Closed Economy
Tunis feels like a capital city that’s on the move. I’m in a yellow taxicab, swerving through packed streets, en route to a Microsoft office to meet the shy son of a subsistence farmer.
Moez Rojbi, 25, taught himself how to make tractors and industrial refrigerators “smart” — connected to the Internet and data driven. And he did it from a tiny plot of land in the south of the country, with just a computer.
Now Rojbi wants to make money and create jobs. He says backing from a major multinational technology company with ties to the U.S. will help him. “Here to be surrounded by experienced people — and actually it’s the elite of Tunis in this field — will enable me to find my way in this business,” Rojbi says.
When I ask if this conference room with swivel chairs and a waterfront view is different from where he got started, Rojbi laughs and says emphatically: “Very different. It’s very different.”
Rojbi has ambition in his eye. But he also faces a big problem, one that existed in the days of the dictator and that persists. Tunisia’s currency, the dinar, is effectively trapped inside the country.
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