Article

Since the start of 2023, Circul'R has been delivering a circular economy training programme for Tunisian municipalities on behalf of GIZ, the German government's cooperation agency, and its Tunisian partners, including the Centre for Training and Support for Decentralisation and the National Waste Management Agency.

Why work with partners on the other side of the Mediterranean?

Circul'R's mission is to put our expertise at the service of the transition to a circular economy. That transition plays out at several levels: from SMEs to large corporates, so as to act on every link in production chains and, where public policy is concerned, from practical implementation at inter-municipal level through to design and planning at regional and national level. Guided by the notion of impact, we also want to serve the transition to a circular economy internationally where we believe it makes sense and where our involvement meets a test of additionality.

Those conditions are met in the following cases:

• Our delivery partner is an organisation that can act as a catalyst for the circular economy in the geography where we work. That is clearly the position of a cooperation agency such as GIZ, which brings expertise still emerging in Europe to bear on the public policies of a third country, and which has the financial and technical firepower to act meaningfully and at scale (supporting a national circular economy development strategy, for example).
• In a geographical context where circular economy skills are scarce and loosely structured, the tools deployed are aimed above all at leverage and knowledge transfer, so as to ensure that our local partners have the capacity to carry the corresponding circular economy development strategy independently once our involvement ends. That is the case with this project in Tunisia, which aims to strengthen human capital on the circular economy for Tunisian municipalities.
• As French and European pioneers of the circular economy, we have an interest in working jointly with our partner: in the case of the project with GIZ in Tunisia, that shared interest is the Mediterranean Sea, a common good we must look after and can protect through the many benefits of the circular economy.

The support we delivered to Tunisian municipalities took shape in 3 stages:

• First, we trained a group of 16 Tunisian trainers in the circular economy, with a twofold aim: being able to count on their technical, linguistic and cultural support during the training sessions run with municipal staff, and being able to rely on this group's knowledge to keep building circular economy expertise in Tunisia over the medium to long term;
• Next, the training module, co-built with the group of Tunisian trainers and adapted to the local context, was delivered in person in 4 regions of Tunisia to nearly 80 municipal managers;
• Finally, an e-learning module is being developed to complement the teaching approach with concise, flexible material that can be delivered to a larger number of learners.