Tunisia's Heat Crisis: Power Cuts Compound Water Shortages as Temps Near 50°C

On August 27, the thermometer in Kairouan climbed to 49.8 degrees Celsius—hot enough to rank second globally that day, behind only a reading in Iran. Six Tunisian cities appeared among the world's twenty hottest monitoring stations. The temperature sat just shy of Tunisia's national record of 50.3 degrees, set five years earlier in 2021. But the heat was not merely a statistical curiosity. It was driving electricity demand to unprecedented levels, forcing the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas to impose rotating power cuts across multiple regions. Those cuts, in turn, were disrupting water supplies in ways that exposed how fragile the country's basic infrastructure had become.

The electricity crisis began with air conditioning. As temperatures soared, households and businesses cranked cooling systems to maximum. In July alone, electricity demand had spiked to 6,000 megawatts—a record—after hitting 5,600 megawatts just days before. The grid could not sustain the load. STEG introduced temporary blackouts in scattered areas across the country, some lasting several hours, to protect the stability of the network itself. The cuts were meant to prevent total system collapse, but they came with consequences the utility had not fully anticipated.

Tunisia's water system depends on electrically powered pumping stations to move water through distribution networks. When electricity vanished, the pumps stopped. On August 24, an interruption at the main Kerker pumping station cut drinking water to parts of Mahdia and Sfax governorates. The National Company for Water Exploitation and Distribution documented the incident as a direct result of the power cut. But this was not the whole story. Tunisia had been struggling with water scarcity for years—structural shortages, recurring drought, aging infrastructure. The World Bank had already flagged the country as facing growing water stress and climate pressures. The electricity cuts were adding acute pressure to a chronic problem, not creating the crisis from nothing.

Bottled water, which might have offered relief, became scarce as well. Power rationing disrupted factory operations just as demand surged. Plastic shortages compounded the problem. Households found themselves without reliable tap water, without electricity to run air conditioners or refrigerate food, and without bottled alternatives. For those dependent on electricity-powered medical equipment—oxygen concentrators, for instance—the cuts created immediate danger. There were reports of difficulties for patients whose home medical devices had been affected, though individual deaths directly attributed to power loss required confirmation from medical authorities.

Hospitals were overwhelmed. On August 29, the Tunisian Organization of Young Doctors reported an "unprecedented" surge in deaths and admissions related to heatstroke and extreme heat. At Habib Bourguiba Hospital in Sfax alone, thirteen people died within twenty-four hours. The organization called for the government to declare a health emergency, saying doctors and nurses were under severe strain. The Health Ministry reported 633 heat-related medical cases requiring consultation and care between July 1 and August 29, and said health services had continued without interruption. But it did not release a nationwide death toll. The gap between the doctors' urgent warnings and the ministry's measured response left the true scale of the crisis unclear.

President Kais Saied offered a different explanation. On August 27, he said investigations had revealed that water and electricity disruptions were not routine technical failures but deliberate acts of sabotage meant to stir tensions and spread rumors. He did not identify who was responsible. That claim remained the president's assertion and should not be treated as an established fact. There were documented technical explanations for at least some disruptions: STEG's rotating cuts were designed to stabilize the grid, and SONEDE had confirmed that the Kerker station outage had directly caused water loss.

The crisis had become political. A protest organized by the Nafas movement in Tunis on August 20 demanded better access to water and electricity alongside calls for lower living costs and greater political freedoms. For ordinary people, the impact was immediate and practical: no air conditioning during lethal heat, no refrigeration for food, no water from the tap. For some, it was life-threatening. The electricity and water systems were linked but distinct problems. Extreme heat was driving record electricity demand. Power cuts were disrupting water pumping. But Tunisia's underlying water shortage was older and deeper—rooted in long-term scarcity and infrastructure challenges that would persist long after the current heatwave broke. As long as temperatures remained elevated, the pressure would continue, and the risk of cascading failures—in refrigeration, in medical equipment, in water distribution—would remain.