Zones Blanches – National White Zones Broadband Coverage Project

In 2017, Tunisia's Ministry of Communication Technologies and Digital Economy ran a national tender to close persistent rural connectivity gaps in 'white zones' — low-density areas deemed commercially unprofitable for private network investment. Tunisie Telecom won the contract (signed 17 November 2017), financed largely through the national Communications Development Fund, with a budget of 38 million Tunisian dinars over a planned seven-year period.

The project aimed to extend 4G broadband coverage to underserved rural sectors that private operators had judged commercially unviable.

Tunisie Telecom rolled out 4G infrastructure covering 94 sectors across 47 delegations in 15 governorates. Tunisie Telecom also carried out smaller, apparently anecdotal digital-inclusion actions layered on top, such as donating computers to set up a student IT club at a primary school in Zmertène.

The Ministry reported roughly 90% completion by May 2020 and formally declared the project complete on 24–25 June 2022, years ahead of the original schedule. Coverage figures — 164 schools, 59 health centres and approximately 180,000 inhabitants connected, at 4G speeds exceeding 20 Mbps — are consistently reported by the Ministry and independently echoed across at least six Tunisian and regional outlets, reducing the risk that these are inflated single-source figures.

No independently audited assessment of post-2022 service quality, sustained usage, or maintenance funding was found; all figures describe network build-out and connection counts at project closure, not measured adoption or educational/health outcomes. The project also shows less evidence of documented learning or course-correction than other programmes in this catalogue.