Tunis vs. the World: How the Capital Is Coping With Punishing Summer Heat

The thermometers along Avenue Habib Bourguiba hit 44 degrees Celsius three days running last week. At least six heat-related deaths have been recorded in Greater Tunis since June 20, according to figures from the Direction des Soins de Santé de Base, the public primary health authority. Across the Mediterranean, France logged more than 2,000 excess deaths during its own peak heat period, and temperatures from Marseille to Milan are still climbing. The question officials and ordinary residents are asking in Tunis right now is blunt: are we handling this better or worse than comparable cities?

The timing matters because this is not a seasonal anomaly. Tunisia's National Institute of Meteorology has formally classified June 2026 as the hottest June in the country's recorded history, surpassing the previous record set in 2023. That comes as governments across North Africa and southern Europe scramble to retrofit urban infrastructure, emergency health networks, and public communication systems built for a cooler world. Tunis, a city of roughly 2.5 million in its greater metropolitan area, is caught between ambition and a chronic shortage of resources.

What Tunis Is Doing — and Where It's Falling Short

The municipality launched its Plan Canicule — the city's formal heatwave emergency protocol — on June 18 this year, two weeks earlier than in 2025. Under the plan, the Hôpital Charles Nicolle on Rue Jeddi in the Bab Saadoun district opened two dedicated heat-stroke stabilisation units, and the Parc du Belvédère in the northern suburbs extended its opening hours until 10 p.m. to give residents a shaded green refuge after dark. Seventeen public water fountains were reactivated across the Médina and La Marsa, some of which had been out of service since 2022 due to maintenance budget cuts.

Compare that with what Casablanca and Algiers have done. Casablanca's municipality opened 34 air-conditioned municipal cooling centres in June, a number Tunis has not matched. Algiers deployed mobile medical units into outer working-class districts like Bab El Oued. Tunis has no equivalent mobile medical programme yet. Barcelona, often cited as a Mediterranean benchmark, allocated €12 million in 2025 to green corridors and building insulation subsidies specifically targeting neighbourhoods with high rates of elderly residents. The municipality of Tunis spent roughly 3.2 million dinars — about €940,000 at current exchange rates — on its entire summer emergency health budget this year.

Residents Navigating the Daily Reality

In the popular Cité Ettahrir neighbourhood southwest of the city centre, residents describe afternoon hours as effectively dead time. Shops along Rue de Kairouan pull their metal shutters by 1 p.m. Some families who cannot afford air conditioning are sleeping on rooftops or in stairwells. The Office National de l'Assainissement reported a 31 percent spike in water consumption across Tunis governorate during the last two weeks of June, straining a distribution network already under pressure.

Electricity cuts have complicated matters further. Société Tunisienne de l'Electricité et du Gaz, the national utility known as STEG, confirmed 47 unscheduled outages in the Tunis region between June 20 and July 1, some lasting three to four hours. That figure compares unfavourably with Amman, where summer load-shedding is managed through a rotating schedule communicated 48 hours in advance — a small administrative difference that residents say matters enormously for planning.

Officials at the Ministère de la Santé have indicated that a revised national heatwave strategy is being drafted for adoption before summer 2027, with a focus on early warning SMS alerts, expanded partnerships with private clinics, and permanent cooling infrastructure in markets and public transit hubs. For now, the practical advice from public health officers is straightforward: avoid outdoor activity between noon and 4 p.m., check on elderly neighbours daily, and use the Liste des Structures de Santé published on the ministry's website to locate the nearest emergency unit. The Hôpital Aziza Othmana on Place du Gouvernement is running extended emergency hours through September 15.