Algeria keeps Tunisia's lights on. Is that a service or leverage?
On 27 July, Algeria's president Abdelmadjid Tebboune told Algerian media that whoever wants to destabilise Tunisia is really aiming at Algeria, and that this would not be allowed. The remark set off two weeks of Tunisian argument about where solidarity ends and tutelage begins, including a national statement circulated on 29 July and left open for signature, holding that real friendship exists only between two independent states equal in sovereignty, not between a protector and a protected. Algerian gas, carried by the TransMed pipeline that crosses the country, feeds Tunisian power generation, and in early August STEG publicly thanked its Algerian counterpart for support during the summer's planned outages.
Where they agree
None of them disputes that Tunisian electricity supply currently rests on Algerian deliveries. STEG's chief executive and the Tunisian expert describe the same dependence from opposite ends, one thanking Algeria for it and the other calling it a failure of Tunisian policy.
Where they split
The split is over what the dependence means. STEG's chief executive treats it as support, in operational terms: the neighbour helped when the grid was under strain. The former ambassador reads the same relationship as leverage and counts energy among the ways he says Algeria isolates Tunisia. The expert moves the question away from Algeria and puts it on the absence of Tunisian investment in generation, a dependence Tunisia built rather than one imposed on it. Tebboune frames it differently again: he speaks of security and of who is really being targeted, not of supply.
What nobody is saying
No authority has published a volume. Webdo notes that the Tunisian authorities have released no figures for the electricity imported from Algeria, and the 500 to 800 megawatts in circulation is one expert's estimate given on air.
He presents Tunisia's security as an Algerian concern rather than a matter of good neighbourliness alone.
”Tunisie, ça c'est clair, parce qu'on veut déstabiliser la Tunisie à cause de l'Algérie... pour pouvoir la manger, la bouffer facilement. Et on ne laissera pas faire”Tunisia, that much is clear, because they want to destabilise Tunisia on account of Algeria, so as to be able to swallow it, to eat it easily. And we will not allow that
He turns the question around and argues that the threat to Tunisia's stability comes from the neighbour itself. In a column on 30 July he puts a series of questions about who occupies Tunisian territories rich in hydrocarbons and water, who organised the 1980 attack at Gafsa, and who seeks to isolate Tunisia using energy and terrorism as leverage. He demands that the security and defence agreements concluded with Algiers on 7 October 2025 be published.
”Un pays qui n'arrive pas à définir la menace réelle à sa stabilité et à sa souveraineté est une proie facile et à moitié conquise”A country that cannot define the real threat to its stability and its sovereignty is easy prey and already half conquered
As head of the state electricity and gas company he sent a letter of thanks to the Algerian group Sonelgaz and its chief executive for their mobilisation during a period of heavy strain on the Tunisian grid. On Ennahar Online's account of that letter, STEG holds that Algerian support helped keep supply running while consumption was exceptionally high. It is the only position here taken by a Tunisian state body.
He places the cause with Tunisia itself, saying the country is now paying for strategic choices that left it heavily dependent on Algeria for electricity. On Jawhara FM he puts imports at between 500 and 800 megawatts, and traces this to the absence of domestic investment in generation. He also criticises the electricity link with Italy, Elmed, arguing that some 1.4 billion dinars is going into it while the country keeps buying power to cover immediate needs.