Tunisia’s water, power crisis fuels growing protests against Saied: What to know

Protests rocked Tunisia’s capital on Thursday night as weeks of water and electricity cuts fueled by extreme heat converged with mounting political anger against President Kais Saied. 

What happened: Hundreds of Tunisians took to the streets of downtown Tunis, the country’s capital, on Thursday evening, calling for Saied to step down. Demonstrators also called for better basic services, including reliable access to water and electricity.

The protest was organized by the newly formed Nafas movement, which was launched in May with the aim of bringing together political parties and independent figures that have struggled to cooperate in opposition to Saied.

Thursday’s protest was among the biggest this summer, reflecting growing frustration over deteriorating living conditions as prolonged heat waves have strained Tunisia’s electricity and water systems and compounded broader anger with the government.

The protest also drew some Tunisians who had never previously participated in political demonstrations, including young social media figures, suggesting that frustration with Saied may be spreading beyond his traditional political opponents.

Neither Tunisia’s government nor the president has made an official statement regarding the latest protest.

Background: Temperatures reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Tunisia in July, driving up electricity demand. National electricity consumption reached a record-high 6,000 megawatts on July 21, up from the preceding record of 5,600 MW the previous week, Faysal Tarifa, head of the state-owned utility STEG, told local journalists. 

STEG's senior director for customer relations, Mounir Ghabri, said that peak consumption during the summer of 2025 had been around 5,250 MW.

As demand surged, STEG began rotating power cuts in several regions. That month, the utility began near-daily intermittent electricity cuts, including in Greater Tunis, the north, northwest, center, south and Sfax, the country's second-largest city. 

The power cuts spread to Tunisia’s already strained water system, affecting pumping stations and further disrupting access to drinking water in some areas. The heat wave also put pressure on bottled water supplies, with electricity outages interrupting production at several bottling plants just as demand surged.

Tunisia's Water Observatory, an independent initiative, said in July that it had received 608 reports related to water supply disruptions and described the situation as a "critical water emergency." 

The disruptions have affected homes as well as businesses and the tourism industry during one of the country’s busiest times of the year for visitors.

The government’s response has done little to reassure Tunisians. On July 22, Saied convened members of his cabinet alongside the heads of STEG and the state-run water utility SONEDE to address the outages. Saied called water and electricity cuts lasting more than 24 hours “unacceptable” and called for a resolution. Outages continued in the weeks that followed. 

Saied’s attempted intervention did little to stem the unrest. Residents in several parts of Nabeul governorate demonstrated on July 21 and 22 against the prolonged water and electricity outages, some reporting days without running water. Days earlier, the powerful labor union UGTT had called for an emergency plan to rescue the water and electricity sectors, arguing that years of structural problems and mismanagement had left the utilities poorly equipped to deal with the crisis.

Know more: On July 25, the fifth anniversary of Saied's consolidation of power, demonstrators again rallied in Tunis calling for his departure and the restoration of political freedoms. Further protests over water and electricity erupted in several regions in early August.

For much of the past five years, opposition protests have centered on the dismantling of Tunisia's post-2011 democratic system. Saied froze the parliament and suspended the government in July 2021, rewrote the constitution and weakened the judiciary. His government has since imprisoned opposition figures, journalists and activists, among them the journalists Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies.