Tunisia: Five Tunisians Ranked Among 100 Most Influential Africans for 2025

21 December 2025
Tunis Afrique Presse (Tunis)

Tunis, Dec 21 — Five Tunisians have been included in New African magazine's 2025 list of the 100 Most Influential Africans, published on December 19.

The honourees are: Hazem Ben Gacem, Lotfi Karoui, Semia Gharbi, Myriam Ben Salah, and Fadhel Kaboub.

The 2025 list represents 32 African nations and features 64 men and 36 women. Business leads the category breakdown with 21 entries, followed by Creatives with 19, Public Office and Thinkers and Opinion Shapers with 15 each, Sports with 13, Change Makers with nine and Technology with eight.

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With five representatives, Tunisia ranks 5th in national representation, following Nigeria (21), South Africa (10), and Kenya and Ghana (7 each).

Hazem Ben Gacem (Business), a Tunisian investor with over three decades' experience in global private markets, is founder and CEO of BlueFive Capital, a Gulf-backed investment manager headquartered in Abu Dhabi. After serving as co-CEO of Investcorp, the Middle East's largest non-sovereign asset manager, he launched BlueFive in early 2025. Already managing hundreds of millions in assets, the firm has offices in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Singapore, Beijing, and London, and focuses on infrastructure, energy, advanced materials, and cross-border growth opportunities in the Global South.

Lotfi Karoui (Business), a financier who joined PIMCO in October 2025 as Managing Director and Multi-Asset Credit Strategist, following a distinguished tenure at Goldman Sachs, where he served as Chief Credit Strategist and was named Partner in 2025. Holding a PhD in Financial Economics from McGill University and degrees from IHEC Carthage and HEC Montréal, Karoui also teaches finance and champions diaspora engagement through the American Business and Finance Association, mentoring venture capital leaders across Africa.

Semia Gharbi (Change maker), is an environmental activist and educator renowned for exposing the "waste colonialism" plaguing Africa. Her advocacy helped reframe illicit waste trafficking as a grave humanitarian, ecological, and moral crisis. In 2025, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Myriam Ben Salah (Creatives) is a curator, writer, and editor shaping global contemporary art discourse. Formerly editor-in-chief of Kaleidoscope and curator at Palais de Tokyo, she has served since 2020 as Director of The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. In 2026, she will curate Yto Barrada's exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

Fadhel Kaboub (Thinkers & Opinion Leaders) is an associate professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. A leading voice on just energy transition and economic sovereignty in the Global South, he co-authored Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Agenda for the Global South. Regularly featured at COP summits and UN panels, Kaboub advocates for policies that reduce aid dependency, tackle climate injustice, and promote reparative economic frameworks.

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