On the Occasion of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2025, the Elife Program Launches the "Regions in Action" Initiative to Highlight the Talents of Tunisian Regions and Foster New Innovation Hubs Away from Traditional Decision-Making Centers
The Press — In the debate on Tunisia's economic future, one thing is clear: national renewal will come from its regions. For too long, these regions have been reduced to remote areas of transit or labor, but today they are revealing themselves as hotbeds of entrepreneurial energy and social innovation. However, today, it's not the ideas that are lacking, but the means to make them a reality — infrastructure, support, financing, and networks. With "Regions in Action," Elife is pursuing a clear ambition: to pave the way for balanced development, where people can live, learn, start a business, and succeed anywhere in the country. This program, supported by the Tunisia Development Foundation, trains and accompanies young people in the regions to encourage local innovation and entrepreneurship. Djerba Kicks Off the Movement On November 11 and 12, Djerba will launch the initiative with innovation workshops, creative challenges, mentorship, and sectoral meetings. This living laboratory will allow young talents from the entire southern region to demonstrate that potential is present as soon as doors are opened. On November 20 and 21, Tunis will continue the dynamic, but this time as a hub of regional energy. The capital will serve as an amplifier, hosting, networking, recognizing, and celebrating ideas from all over the country. A strong symbol: the center is no longer the sole captor, but a connector. A Global Vision, a Tunisian Anchor Celebrated in over 200 countries, Global Entrepreneurship Week 2025 carries a clear message: innovation is born from collaboration, openness, and the courage to dare. In Tunisia, this edition reminds us that creativity knows no borders. It reveals itself as much in a medina as in an oasis, on an island as in a mining town. It thrives everywhere where people choose to stay and build, work, and innovate — often in demanding conditions — rather than leaving to try their luck elsewhere, at the risk of facing even tougher challenges. Building Ecosystems on a Human Scale Reinventing regional development does not mean reproducing Tunis in every governorate. Instead, it's about imagining economic models rooted in local specificities, with intelligent agriculture that enhances local products, cultural industries, and sustainable tourism connected to heritage, innovative local services, improved access to healthcare, education, and digital technology, as well as the growth of renewable energy and social innovation. Locally driven, these entrepreneurial initiatives irrigate the territories, retain skills, create permanent jobs, strengthen social cohesion, and contribute to alleviating demographic pressure on the coast. A Tunisia That Builds Itself Everywhere, by Everyone "Regions in Action" is not just a slogan. It's a method, but also a state of mind. That of a country that finally understands that its future will not be built by concentrating hope in the same place, but by sowing it everywhere where there is a desire to act. Tunisia will not rise by recentralizing, but by diffusing, by irrigating its territories with opportunities, knowledge, networks, and trust. Betting on youth is not about pretending to help them; it's about recognizing their ability to invent, transform, and take over. It's about believing that projects born in the workshops of a southern island, in a fablab in the northwest, or in a rural coworking space have just as much value as those imagined in the towers of the capital. It's about admitting that Tunisian genius is not limited to one address, but lives in every idea, every return, every dream that one chooses to nurture here rather than exile elsewhere. Where Ideas Are Born, Tunisia Is Reborn In a village where a young person creates an agricultural startup. In a small town where women set up a cultural cooperative. In a high school in an interior region where 3D printing, robotics, and digital art are discovered, and where one dares to make a future out of them. These gestures, these individual trajectories, these discreet but tenacious initiatives are redrawing the map of what is possible. Thus, a polycentric, creative, and solidarity-based Tunisia emerges, not fragmented but connected, not in competition but in an arc of talents and vocations. A Tunisia proud of each of its regions: their voices, accents, resources, and dreams. A Tunisia that no longer waits to be saved by a center, but advances because each territory finds within itself the momentum to rise and contribute. This movement is not a distant promise. It has already begun. And every young person who decides to stay, every project that takes root far from the coast, every idea that finds a mentor or incubator a few kilometers from home is proof that the country's future is being built where people choose to believe in it.
