A female academic makes history by being appointed PM

A former academic and political outsider has become the first woman in the history of Tunisia to lead the country’s government.

After a long career in teaching at a Tunisian university and administrative work in the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Professor Najla Bouden Romdhane was named prime minister by Tunisian President Kais Saied (himself a former university lecturer who seized power in July in a move condemned by his rivals as an attack on democracy) on 29 September.

Speaking in an online video, Saied said Romdhane’s appointment honoured Tunisian women. He asked her to propose a cabinet in the coming hours or days “because we have lost a lot of time”. The new government should confront corruption and respond to the demands of Tunisians in all fields, including education, he said.

The French-educated Romdhane (63) has a PhD in earthquake engineering from Ecole des Mines de Paris. She worked as a geology professor at the National Engineering School of Tunis at Tunis El Manar University.

In 2011, she was put in charge of quality at the ministry of higher education and scientific research and thereafter continued in the position of head of the Purpose Action Unit in the same ministry.

Romdhane has been responsible for implementing the World Bank-financed programme designed to support the modernisation of the country’s higher education system to foster employability – known as PromEssE – since 2016.

A ‘welcome first’

Professor Farouk El-Baz, retired director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University and a member of the presidential advisory council that advises Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, told University World News the appointment was a “welcome first”, assuring “Arab populations everywhere that the Tunisian leadership respects education and knowledge”.

El-Baz said: “Politicians have led the country for so long; they corrupted and nearly bankrupted it. Thus, it is the turn of highly educated academics to prove their worth in leadership positions.”

Najmuddin Juweidah, general coordinator of the Union of Tunisian University Teachers and Researchers (IJABA, meaning ‘answer’ in Arabic), said the organisation called on the new prime minister to “take care of the following urgent requests for the academic community”.

These “requests” included establishing a pandemic preparedness evaluation system for higher education institutions.

“A COVID-19 tracking system for the university community must be established for monitoring the real epidemiological situation, including infection and death cases among students, professors and employers in order to help with evidence-based decision-making in the higher education sector,” Juweidah said, adding that financial and human resources were also needed to counter the pandemic.

On 1 October 2021, Tunisia had 707,190 infections and 24,890 COVID-19-related deaths. The figures place the country second in Africa in terms of COVID-related deaths after South Africa.

Tunisia has fully vaccinated about 34% of its population of about 12 million people.

Juweidah also called for urgent improvements in the infrastructure of university and scientific research centres, the integration of unemployed PhDs into higher education and scientific research institutions, and improved status and salaries for academic and research staff.

Salaries and working conditions

Tunisian academics at the highest end of the pay scale earn less than the minimum annual salary necessary to sustain a middle-class lifestyle, according to a survey of Arab public university professors’ remuneration.

Juweidah also called for a “dialogue” aimed at “radical and real” higher education reforms which were needed to put an end to the academic brain drain which has been on the increase, particularly among health care professionals, according to a September 2020 study.

He called for the principle of ‘trade union pluralism’ to be activated and for the budget of the ministry of higher education and scientific research to be increased.

Another demand was the establishment of an independent higher authority to help to ensure links between science, industry and national development.

Juweidah said that, as a former university professor who has held many positions within the ministry of higher education over the past 15 years, Romdhane was well placed to understand “the problems of the higher education and scientific research sector and its people”.

“It remains to be seen whether the educational and professional background for the new prime minister will result in real reform and development for the higher education sector,” Juweidah said.

“The answer to this question remains related to the extent of the new prime minister’s determination to break from the system of patronage, clientelism and loyalty in the ministry, and act only in the interests of the sector and its community,” he concluded.