LIFE Summer Research Grant Reflections: Internet Access in Rural Tunisia

This is the second blog post in a series written by the 2025 recipients of the Duke University Libraries Summer Research Fellowship for LIFE Students. You can read the first post and the second post in this series. This post was written by Mehdi.

The year 2025 has been marked by the widespread use of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini. University students in the United States are using it frequently. One of the dangers of such technologies is that they can exacerbate social inequalities. Artificial intelligence has become a tool that people around me seem to take for granted, often assuming it is universally accessible—which is far from true.

This summer, I decided to research the case study of the north African country Tunisia. The initial questions I started with were: To what extent do rural communities in Tunisia have access to the internet? What devices do these communities tend to use? How could the latter affect their uses of the internet and AI? What projects have been put in place to get us to where we are today in terms of technological access in Tunisia? And what initiatives are working to expand access for people in disadvantaged communities? Are there educational resources and training to help Tunisian youth make the most of the internet, rather than simply having access to addictive or ad-heavy websites like social media and pornography?

My research was influenced by the case of Myanmar—a country where Facebook promised to provide internet access, but instead gave people access only to Facebook.com. The latter was used to spread hate and propaganda. Ultimately, that contributed to the genocide of thousands of people.

In May 2025, I traveled to Tunisia to research tech access for students in underserved areas. I was naïve at the beginning, thinking that getting answers would be as easy as coming up with the questions. But thanks to this research, I build an appreciation for conducting research and the obstacles that it entails.

Observations

When it comes to internet access, I was pleasantly surprised. The Tunisian government has established solid internet infrastructure, even in remote or isolated areas, by requiring major internet and telecommunication providers to cover them. For example, I interviewed a senior official at Orange,a major internet provider, who confirmed that they exceeded the percentage of Tunisian land area they were required to connect to the internet. In addition to providing connectivity, they also offered coaching and educational workshops—especially for women and girls—to help them learn how to benefit from the internet.

I also interviewed a professor who partook in the project called Connecting the Unconnected, which has worked over the past decade to expand internet connectivity across the country. He told me their initial priorities were basic healthcare centers and schools, and eventually they expanded coverage to other areas. In another interview with the CEO of the Institution for Technological Access in Education, he asserted that every school and university in the country has access to high-speed internet. However, my interviews with students cast doubt on this claim. In one instance, although an internet cable had been installed at a school, the dean redirected the connection to his private home, depriving the rest of the institution of access. Throughout my conversations with students similar stories recurred. Students claimed that legislators and project managers are disconnected from their reality on the ground.

Regarding the evolution of the internet in Tunisia from the 2000s until today, a few patterns emerge. For example, in 2004, then-president Ben Ali wanted to take an open-source approach. He encouraged institutions to adopt free software with transparent code. However, under mysterious circumstances, this decision was reversed, and the country opted to purchase licenses from Microsoft and other IT service providers. (Side note: Internet—and social media in particular—played a key role in building momentum for the Tunisian revolution that overthrew the dictator Ben Ali).

Tunisia still lacks centralized databases for research papers and books. As part of my research, I traveled to remote towns in the south of the country and noticed that there were free public libraries with internet access and computers available for students. However, the library databases were not centralized, so each library had to rely solely on its own resources. There was also a significant lack of digitized documents(e.g. PDF scans).

One major issue that kept recurring in my conversations with various stakeholders was maintenance and follow-up. Students complained about entire machines in their universities that had been out of service for years due to a single broken part that no one came to fix. Teachers spoke of hundreds of computers sitting in storage instead of being used by students, simply because the operating system license had expired a year earlier. I strongly recommend that future projects include maintenance in their budgets and establish a clear follow-up timeline.

Challenges and Lessons Learned

In terms of methodology, I had to be highly adaptable and quickly realized that things on the ground didn’t always go as planned. My first approach was to conduct online research—reading reports, papers, and books. The unexpected challenge here was rather ironic: both the National Archives and National Library had outdated resources, and there didn’t seem to be any online databases with comprehensive research on my topic. Additionally, all of the reports I found by relevant institutions stopped being issued after 2021.

The second methodology was in-person observation and interviews with people. The challenge here was lack of time. I underestimated how much time this kind of observational research would
take—getting people to agree to participate and committing to interviews took longer than expected.

The third methodology involved interviewing officials and decision-makers. The issue here was that the formal process was not only inefficient, but sometimes nonexistent. In many cases, I had to rely on networking and private connections to get interviews with the relevant actors.

What I enjoyed most about this research, however, was the unexpected chaos. Indeed, when I thought about research, I imagined a quiet process of reading books, doing online searches, and holding informal interviews. However, in reality, many of my interviews were informal, often resulting from a conversation with a friend or family member who would say, “You should talk to this person.” I also found that while I’d plan every hour of my day, I’d often end up stuck in traffic for two hours trying to get to the National Library, only to deal with reception bureaucracy and realize I needed to obtain paperwork from a different department. This would send me back an hour later, leaving me three hours behind schedule and forcing me to readjust my plans. I think I enjoyed this part of the process the most because it threw me off guard and helped me realize that unless I had taken the plunge and done this research, I would have continued holding misconceptions about the research process.

My first piece of advice for someone conducting similar research is to give yourself far more time than you think you’ll need. Even at your best efficiency, people operate on their own schedules—not yours. Like me, you might end up pursuing dead ends that don’t lead to meaningful results—like when I read five books related to the topic, only to find they didn’t offer any value to my research. If I were to redo this research, I would give myself at least three months.

My second piece of advice is to collaborate with peers. Join forces with other student researchers. It’s great to have someone to keep you company, motivate you, and share the frustrations of running into dead ends. Doing this kind of research alone can be draining, and having a research partner makes the process much more manageable.