Geopolitics Now Hits the Heart of Tunisian Companies
The Press — Once seen as a distant concern, geopolitics has become a concrete reality for business leaders. In this context, Mehdi Taje, director of Global Prospect Intelligence and senior expert in geopolitical analysis, strategic foresight, and anticipation methodologies, stresses that “geopolitics is no longer a distant topic; it is now directly reflected in companies’ profit‑and‑loss statements.”
Geopolitical Risks Must Be Taken Seriously
According to Taje, a single customs tariff can wipe out an entire year’s margin, an international sanction can close a market overnight, a regional crisis can paralyze a supply chain within 48 hours, and a change in environmental or health regulations can render a product non‑exportable.
The World Economic Forum confirms this trend: geopolitics now conditions investment decisions, market access, and the continuity of value chains. For a Tunisian firm that relies heavily on external trade, exposure is maximal and the margin for error is virtually nil.
Ignoring geopolitics does not make a company neutral; it makes it vulnerable.
Failing to anticipate regional tensions, regulatory shifts, or market shocks can be extremely costly, even jeopardizing the profitability of strategic projects. Conversely, embedding geopolitics into strategy secures investments, anticipates standards, strengthens operational resilience, and reduces the cost of capital—investors now reward companies that can manage strategic risks and demonstrate mastery of complex environments.
Toward a Strategic Culture of Anticipation
For Taje, prospective analysis and geopolitical monitoring have become essential tools. They enable decision‑makers to:
- Reason in scenarios
- Map critical dependencies—suppliers, customers, logistics infrastructure, and sensitive zones
- Prepare rapid responses to crises
As one Tunisian executive put it:
“Geopolitics must enter the strategic committee, not stay on television!”
Large corporations and multinational groups have already created strategic‑watch cells or appointed Chief Geopolitical Officers to turn information into operational decisions and protect competitiveness.
A National Call for Cross‑Sector Strategic Foresight
Taje stresses the urgent need to build a transversal strategic‑anticipation capability at the national level—one that can illuminate economic, security, and social decisions.
Future competitiveness will no longer hinge solely on production costs or price points; it will depend on a company’s ability to understand power dynamics, anticipate disruptions, and turn geopolitical and geo‑economic upheavals into strategic advantages.
Bottom Line
In Taje’s words:
- “Those who understand decide, those who anticipate advance, those who ignore suffer.”
For Tunisian businesses, geopolitics is not a constraint but a lever for resilience and value creation in an unstable, competitive world. In this context, the cost of anticipation is always lower than the cost of error—often by several million euros.
