This is a CTP of initiative: Living Labs - Sfax Smart Living Lab (Tunisia)
This CTP (CTP2) is an external event to the SSCLL initiative, but had a tremendous impact on it and on Tunisia as a whole. The CTP is about the Tunisian Revolution in January 2011, which resulted in the closing of the Chair of Innovation in the School of Engineers of Sfax University. Adel explains “The people, the concept [of the Chair of Innovation] were still there, but the location/ accommodation was not accessible anymore because of political reasons”. The revolution paused all developments going on in the country and led to political instability in which universities administrations were changed, and the relation with the industry became weaker. After the revolution presidential and governmental elections took place, as well as elections for many other entities in the country including university faculties. Subsequently, the Chair of Innovation Office closed and Adel Alimi was no longer the director of the Engineering faculty of Sfax University. Despite the challenges, it also gave energy to the team to reinvent themselves.
The Tunisian revolution started on 17th of December 2010, when many initiatives opposing the system started to evolve after the self-immolation of ‘Mohammed Bouazizi’ in Sidi Bouzid city. The revolution was an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a series of street demonstrations taking place on a daily basis in different locations in Tunisia. These continued to be opposed and stopped by the police until they suddenly led to the ousting of longtime president ‘Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’. Adel states “it was quite surprising that the president despite his still present power and control over the situation, suddenly leaves his position. Suggested reasons included external pressures on him.”
The revolution resulted in a situation where the whole ruling system was removed gradually in the following months until the first free and democratic elections took place in October 2011 for parliament, and for most entities in the country including the university faculties. This has led to the closing of the Chair of Innovation, after the faculty administration was changed.
According to Adel Alimi, an important outcome of the revolution is that the Tunisian people have proven to themselves and to the ruling persons that they are free and strong to express their opposition to the system and now the ruling persons know that they can’t have absolute power like they did before. Certainly it will need some time to stabilize the new democratic system.
This CTP, the Tunisian Revolution and how it developed, was certainly a co-production of many different actors in Tunisia, and not led or planned by any specific person or entity.
The revolution was more a self-organized movement, which consisted of different, consistent street demonstrations and an intensive campaign of civil resistance. Being bottom-up driven without a leader or guide indicates the revolution’s pure public interest, which led to a politically unclear and unstable post-revolution period.
If there was one person who can be considered the provoker of the revolution at the very beginning it is ‘Mohammed Bouazizi’ who immolated himself on December 17th 2010 in the middle of the traffic in front of the governor’s office in Sidi Bouzid city. Bouazizi immolated himself after he was humiliated by the police several times for being a street vendor without license and his wares were confiscated without any consideration of his extremely poor financial situation. When his complaining to the governorate was totally ignored he decided to immolate himself to express his extreme anger against his mistreatment by the government, but also his helplessness in the face of lack of opportunity (huffingtonpost, 2016). Just a day after the self-immolation incident, protests started to evolve in different locations in Tunisia and lasted for a whole month until the stepping down of the president in January 14th 2011.
Similar to other Arab spring revolutions, the social network of the people played a very important role in the Tunisian revolution. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, had a strong facilitating role to connect the people and to upscale the demonstrations and the whole opposition process. While it started via Twitter between Tunisian activists, it soon spread to Facebook, which was a much more popular medium for the general public. In two weeks only, the protests moved from Sidi Bouzid city and its surrounding area, which were quite far from the capital and bigger cities such as Sfax and Tunis. In addition, social media and satellite television channels played a crucial role in bringing the external world into the picture. In fact, external pressures from outside Tunisia supported the revolution against the existing ruling system.
The Tunisian revolution was less violent than other revolutions in the Middle east at that time, which is related to the different actors’ characteristics. Firstly, the strong powerful position of the police played an important role in keeping the whole situation under control. In addition, the weak position of the military didn’t pose any considerable threats to the police making their controlling position even stronger. According to Adel Alimi, the level of education of the Tunisians, which is considered one of the highest in the Middle East, was another reason why protests were less violent compared to other in the Middle East. More information about the Tunisian revolution can be found on this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-delany/how-social-media-accelera_b_821497.html
The Tunisian revolution was evoked by several events and long-term developments.
One of the main reasons for the breakout of the revolution was the very corrupt ruling family in Tunisia, which was in control since decades; president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was in power since 23 years. The family had been using its power to increase its wealth in a period of increasing inflation and unemployment. Different family members of the president including his wife and brother-in-law abused their power for making business deals that benefit them only. (newrepublic.com, 2016)
In addition, Tunisia had been suffering from increasing unemployment, food inflation, and poor living conditions. Unemployment had increased to 14% according to the modest government estimates and was mainly spread among the youth many of whom were relatively well-educated. The prices of basic goods had highly increased becoming unaffordable to many Tunisians. (newrepublic.com, 2016)
Moreover, the lacking political freedoms such as freedom of speech was one of the main triggers of the protests. Throughout the ruling years of Ben Ali media channels have been controlled and censored, including newspapers, public television, even websites and social media. Four newspapers were directly owned by the son-in-law of the president. (newrepublic.com, 2016)
While these developments led to the accumulated anger of the Tunisian public, the event that triggered the breakdown of the revolution was the previously mentioned self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi. In fact, the protests started on the 17th of December 2010, only one day after this incident.
The revolution resulted in significant changes and events, some were immediately afterwards and others developed with the time. On the 14th of January 2011, 28 days after the protests had begun the Tunisian president officially resigned after fleeing to Saudi Arabia. A state of emergency was declared and for a few months the country suffered from political instability until the first free and democratic elections for parliament took place in October 2011.
According to Adel Alimi, “New ruling parties lacked experience and vision, and with the time developed some of the old system’s negative characteristics such as corruption. This indicates that the problem is in the lacking control, transparency and law enforcement of the system not only in the ruling persons themselves.”
After the parliament elections, presidential and governmental elections took place, as well as elections for many other entities in the country including university faculties. This resulted in the closing of the Chair of Innovation Office particularly after Adel Alimi was no longer the director of the Engineering faculty of Sfax University, which made the team realize the importance of having a different, independent place for the Chair of Innovation Office. Moreover, a large extent of the industrial sector especially the innovative industries had to close or suffered to survive after the revolution.
However, with the ongoing elections and increasing political stability a feeling of security and an optimistic hopeful spirit spread and enabled the Chair of Innovation team to organize the second robotic competition in December 2011. This was part of a larger ambition to continue SSCLL as is further described under learning and in the following CTPs.
The CTP involved contestations on different levels and between diverse stakeholders, as is typical for a revolution of such scale. The nature of contestation in the Tunisian Revolution was too complex and multi-faceted to be fully captured in this section, thus the researcher will cover the contestations in a simplified manner consisting of three main levels or arenas.
The Tunisian revolution was not expected at all, at least in terms of its timing, its scale, its proceedings and the impacts it had on Tunisia and on the Middle East as a whole. This was particularly the case as it was the first of the Middle East revolutions in 2011, and was the first revolution to be purely led by the general public in Tunisia as well as the Middle east since decades ago.
When it first started people had mixed feelings and expectations, between fear and anxiety, and courage and hopefulness. They didn’t know whether the revolution will achieve at least some of their goals or whether it could rather have negative impacts on Tunisia, politically, economically and socially. The 14th of January 2011, the day of the ousting of the ruling family, was a turning point in the revolution and in the momentum of the people. For the first time people realized that they are able to fight against and even defeat the strong dictatorship rule, which they previously thought was invincible. This was when hope and positive spirit have become stronger between the people.
The way the revolution impacted the socio-political, economical life as well as all the different sectors, such as education, research and industry was not foreseen from the beginning. Certainly, temporary pausing of a large array of activities in the country was expected, but the duration of it and the extent of it were not anticipated. Higher research and the innovation field and industry seemed of lower priority over more basic problems and societal challenges of the Tunisians, such as freedom of speech, the corruption in the system and the deteriorating living conditions.
On the SSCLL development level it was expected that some delays or at least a temporary pausing of the Chair of Innovation Office activities would occur, but not the complete closing of its venue in the Engineering Faculty. This was a result of the changing administration and its priorities and vision. And has resulted in an important learning experience for the SSCLL team, which will be addressed in the following section.
This CTP was a learning experience on different levels.
On the level of the Tunisian people, it taught them they are stronger than they thought and that they can realize far-fetched goals if they collaborate and share the same ambitions. They regained confidence in their capabilities to change something and to express themselves after being silent for decades. The extent of lessons learned from such an experience is limitless and its impact will be increasingly understood for years to come.
On the SSCLL initiative level, two main lessons can be identified. First, the necessity of having an independent, reliable venue for the laboratory was realized. Being dependent on the faculty of engineering administration and its changing priorities was too risky and proved to be ineffective in the first changing circumstances. This led Adel Alimi to think of relocating of the Living Lab in the already existing ‘Regim Lab’ (Research Groups in Intelligent Machines) owned and managed by him, which is the following CTP.
In addition, the Tunisian revolution woke up the sense of social responsibility and belonging in many Tunisians, including the SSCLL team. These became more concerned about the social aspect of their initiative rather than only focusing on the industrial sector. They developed a strong motivation to take part in building the new Tunisian society that was starting a fresh page after the revolution. They decided to involve the public more in their projects and to help increase the awareness and capacity building skills of interested persons as well as increase the applicability of their products to the Tunisian public. The already initiated social orientation in the Robotic Competition in April 2010 was more emphasized in the following competitions. In September 2011, the SSCLL team announced the robotic competition in December 2011 in Laico Hotel, Yassmine Hammamet – Tunisia , which is an area usually visited by Tunisian families during this time of the year. This way they tried to make it more attractive and accessible for the Tunisian public to visit.
It certainly wasn’t an easy step for such a research lab to shift from the advanced research in robotics and space to the new target audience which included the public. As Adel explains, they had to find ways to disseminate this new culture of robotic applications by formulating challenges that are accessible for the people and to which they would respond with designs. He elaborates: “For example, we formulated simple, more accessible challenges, which match the Tunisian context and mentality of the people. Many electronic parts are not easily available in the Tunisian markets, so we tailored the competition to easily suit the local conditions and available resources for students.”
References
Available at: http://smart-sfax.org [Accessed 2016].
Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-delany/how-social-media-accelera_b_821497.html [Accessed 2016].
Available at: https://newrepublic.com/article/81611/making-sense-tunisia [Accessed 2016].
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