Strengthening Equal Partnerships In Sfax, Tunisia

African intermediary cities as actors and partners in urban migration governance

By Samuel Hall Team as part of the Equal Partnerships Project

This video was originally published on the Equal Partnerships website and has been reposted with their permission.

The Equal Partnerships project led by Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg, Research on Migration, Displacement, and Integration (MFI), United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLG Africa), German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and Samuel Hall with support from Robert Bosch Stiftung explores the opportunities and challenges of collaborative, urban migration governance in African intermediary cities.

Through participatory research, workshops, and networking formats, we bring together local, national, and international actors to develop practical impulses and policy recommendations for multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Policy Recommendations From Sfax

One of the cities, Samuel Hall explored and led the intervention is Sfax, Tunisia.

Sfax is Tunisia’s second-largest city. Situated at the Mediterranean coast, the city represents an important economic center connecting the north and south of the country.

Sfax is home to around 615,000 inhabitants with approximately 950,000 inhabitants living in the wider agglomeration. The city experiences rural-urban, inter-regional, and international mixed migration.

The increasingly difficult socio-economic situation, financial constraints, gender dynamics, the absence of a national migration strategy as well as the politicization of mobility issues between North Africa and Europe, result in unique implications on migration dynamics in Sfax.

The municipality participates in the international Mediterranean City-to-City Migration network (MC2CM) and aims to address questions of migration at the local level. In addition, a broad range of other actors engage on migration and displacement in direct or indirect ways, including migrant associations, national agencies, local and national NGOs, Sfax university, and international organizations.

To create an overview of activities, partnerships, and cooperation gaps, the Equal Partnerships project developed participatory field research and organized a local workshop with the support of the municipality of Sfax in January and February 2023.

The stakeholder mapping shows that civil society and international actors have created a referral and coordination system on migration issues. Representatives of national agencies and the municipality participate at times in these meetings and the municipality has worked in partnership with migrant associations.

However, the local scope for action remains very limited in the absence of local-national dialogues. The case study situates Sfax in the national and regional migration context, presents the outcomes of the stakeholder mapping, identifies opportunities and challenges of cooperative action on migration and concludes with concrete policy recommendations for strengthening multi-stakeholder action on urban migration and displacement.

The video developed by Samuel Hall and Peter Ndung’u (Rock Images) explores recommendations for cooperative action on urban migration governance presented by representatives from Sfax municipality and the migrant association Afrique Intelligence.

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Read the Sfax City Report here.

Check out the Equal Partnerships website for more videos, city reports, podcasts on urban migration governance in African intermediary cities.