Tunisia is a transit country. The harder ambition is to become an African partner

For years Tunisia has been a place people pass through on the way to Europe. Turning that into genuine partnership is the unfinished work.

Tunisia sits on one of the busiest migration corridors in the Mediterranean. Thousands of people from across the continent reach its coast each year hoping to cross to Italy, and the country has become, by circumstance more than design, a transit hub. The politics around this have often been ugly, and the human cost high.

A transit role is something that happens to a country. Partnership is something it chooses. The opportunity is to convert proximity into trade, study and investment that flow both ways, and to treat Tunisians and Africans from further south as part of one economic story rather than a problem to be managed.

That shift would require steadier policy, calmer rhetoric and institutions willing to build links rather than walls. The continent to the south is young, growing and short of exactly the services Tunisia can offer. The question is whether Tunis decides to face it.