Case Study:
Systems Analysis for Youth Employment in Tunisia
From Systems Analysis to Strategic Action:
Decoding Youth Unemployment in Tunisia
The Challenge
The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) sought to address youth unemployment in Tunisia – a complex, multi-faceted challenge driven by interconnected political, economic and cultural factors. With ambitious goals to create employment opportunities for 200,000 young women and men across the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel and West Africa, the programme needed a rigorous approach to understand the system dynamics before selecting strategic interventions.
Tunisia presented a particularly complex context for youth employment, characterised by:
Multiple interconnected market failures across various economic sectors
Deep-rooted governance challenges affecting labour markets
Significant regional variations in employment opportunities
Cultural and social norms affecting youth transitions to work
Limited growth potential in traditional sectors like agriculture
The Approach
Rather than applying conventional economic analysis, CFYE partnered with Integrity and The Canopy Lab to conduct an experimental systems analysis using the Actor-Based Change (ABC) Framework. This approach positioned actors and their behaviours at the centre of the analysis, recognising that youth unemployment emerges from the complex interactions between multiple stakeholders in the system.
The methodology integrated three distinct analytical approaches:
Market Systems Analysis: To unpack the supply and demand constraints within the labor market, focusing on actors and their relationships in key value chains.
Political Economy Analysis: To map the formal and informal institutions, power dynamics, and incentive structures that shape actor behaviour.
Community-Led Research: To elevate youth perspectives and gain rich, qualitative insights into their lived experiences, perceptions, and priorities.
Systems Map
The synthesis of these research strands resulted in a comprehensive actor-based systems map that visualised:
Key actor groups across different system levels (governance, market, agribusiness, education)
Relationships and flows between actors (financial, informational, labour, oversight, power)
Behavioural conditions that drive current practices using the COM-B framework (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation)
Problematic relationships that perpetuate youth unemployment
Potential leverage points where intervention could catalyse broader system change
The map revealed critical insights that would have been difficult to identify through conventional analysis alone, including hidden power dynamics, informal institutional barriers, and unexpected relationships between actors that influenced employment outcomes.
View the interactive systems map
From Practice to a Framework
The experimental approach and lessons from the Tunisia analysis were formalised into a dedicated guide for systems analysis. Our Strategic Framework: Systems Analysis in Practice is the direct product of this engagement . Co-authored by Mark Oldenbeuving and Arqam Lodhi, this framework serves as a practical, operational guide for organisations on how to conduct a rigorous, actor-centric systems analysis.
