The personal and professional website of Douglas Van Bossuyt
Giovanna and I went to the Tunis Medina one day to buy some Chechias (the red hats on our heads). We met this guy named Noradine who owns a shop in the Chechia Souk (market). He cut us a good deal, better than what most of the locals get! We also took a few pictures.
Our trip to CEMAT was mainly to show us where the building was located. The building itself has quite the history. Originally an Italian household, it was taken over by the French and finally by the Tunisians. Now it’s on permanent lease to CEMAT. CEMAT stands for something along the lines of Center (for) Magrib Studies at Tunis. It’s a point of entry for researchers and scholars from the USA headed to North Africa. I’ll need to go back at some point to look up information on GCT.
The real point of interest on the outing was Amen Bank and our talk with several of the bank goons on the roll of a private bank in Tunisia. In the end, we found out that their motivation is purely one of profit. It’s not surprising, as it seems all businesses focus more and more on the bottom line as they get bigger and bigger. I was very interested in the way the bankers sidestepped our questions trying to pin them down on loans to the agricultural sector and small businesses. There is one bank in Tunisia, backed by the government, which is making small loans, but that’s not Amen bank! I never got around to asking my question to see if the bankers think that the growth Tunisia has seen since independence is sustainable and what sector of the economy will be the hottest in ten years.
It’s interesting to see that Amen Bank is giving priority to the service sector, even over the industrial sector now. They are actually reducing their holdings in industry in favor of services. It appears that Amen Bank thinks Tunisia will go the way of America, focusing on the services sector to the detriment of agriculture, real estate, and industry.
The only other thing of interest was the trophy of real-time banking which the goons so proudly displayed. Since I started my first savings account over 15 years ago, all of my banking has always been electronic and instantaneous. In Tunisia, this is the first foray into the world of digital banking and the death rattle of the banking paper trail. Long live 1’s and 0’s! Death to paper! Or so it seems the goons want us to believe. It’ll be interesting to see if Tunisians accept paperless banking and the seeming unaccountability of the system. Statistically, fewer errors are made with the computer than on paper, the traceability of transactions increases, and money flows much faster. Of course, its not the same as having a physical record which someone has to pull from a big file cabinet and write something in. Banking in Tunisia will never be the same.
All in all, it was a good visit. I hope we get the chance to visit a government controlled public bank before we leave to contrast between the two. Surely the public bank must look out for the best interests of the country rather than solely be motivated by profit. Right?
At CITET we were shown around the various labs and facilities at CITET’s disposal. We also were treated to a short presentation of CITET’s activities. It was particularly interesting to see the disproportionate number of women working in the labs and administration of CITET. I wonder if CITET has particularly progressive hiring practices or is mandated to hire a certain percentage of women to be shown off as a trophy agency that demonstrates the parity between men and women. More than likely the second is true. However, I will continue to believe the first.
The most interesting part of CITET for me was the five different demonstrations of sustainable and renewable technologies. Among them there was one to treat waste water, another to treat the byproduct of olive oil production, another to generate electricity from biogas created from vegetable market waste, two windmills and a solar array to generate power, and others. The ones that caught my eye the most had moving parts and were shiny. As any good engineer knows, shininess counts!
CITET is a very interesting agency. It doesn’t have any regulatory or other such power. The agency isn’t designed to protect the environment. Rather, it helps industry comply with environmental regulations and laws, monitors the coastline for other agencies and ministries, and monitors industry for violations of laws. The general public never sees the direct effects of CITET. Instead, other agencies fine companies and close beaches. CITET is for science – not for bureaucracy. I wonder how independent CITET is from the rest of the government and outside influence. If they were to find a gross violation of the environmental law from a company such as GCT, would it be reported or would such findings be kept quite for one reason or another?
The possibility of working for such an agency is appealing, especially with its large pool of highly talented employees. I feel slightly inadequate in my knowledge base compared to the researchers and technicians at CITET. Would I actually make a difference for CITET and for Tunisia if I took an internship there? It’s hard to say. I think that it’d not be as good compared to GCT or another firm to learn Arabic at. It appears that most scientific work is done in French, not Arabic. I would be interested to see which is spoken and used more within CITET as compared with other internship prospects.
All in all, I’m impressed that Tunisia has taken such a forward thinking view on the environment compared to other North African countries. Indeed, other countries are even calling upon CITET to train their people in the ways of sustainability. Were it not for colonization attempts on the Magrib, maybe there wouldn’t have been a time where the communities in question went from sustainable to unsustainable. With the help of CITET, I think that the pendulum will swing the other direction to make Tunisia and all of the Magrib sustainable once more.