Mohamed Salah Arfaoui

Mohamed Salah Arfaoui was a Tunisian civil engineer and independent politician who served as Minister of Equipment, Housing and Spatial Planning from 2015 to 2018. Born on 11 January 1956 in Bizerte, then under the French protectorate of Tunisia, he trained at the National Engineering School of Tunis and later at the Institut de defence nationale. He also completed specialised training in Japan and South Korea, and was promoted to the rank of general engineer in 1981.

Much of his career was spent inside the Ministry of Equipment and related agencies. He oversaw planning linked to the 2001 Mediterranean Games, including work associated with the Olympic city at Rades, and took part in major infrastructure projects such as the port of Zarzis. He directed the Direction generale des batiments civils and in 2008 became chief executive of the Agence de rehabilitation et de renovation urbaine (ARRU), the national urban rehabilitation agency. Those posts placed him among the senior technocrats who shaped Tunisia's public buildings and urban renewal programmes over several decades.

On 6 February 2015 Prime Minister Habib Essid appointed him Minister of Equipment, Housing and Spatial Planning under President Beji Caid Essebsi. He kept the portfolio when Youssef Chahed formed a government in 2016 and remained in office until 14 November 2018. After leaving the ministry he became a chief adviser to Chahed and continued in a presidential-government advisory role into late 2019. Contemporaries remembered him as a builder of large public works rather than a party politician; he sat as an independent throughout his cabinet service.

Arfaoui's path from provincial Bizerte to national infrastructure leadership reflected a classic Tunisian engineering career: long apprenticeship inside the state, technical study abroad, then senior agency and ministerial responsibility. Reporting after his death emphasised ports, stadia, civil buildings, and urban rehabilitation as the concrete record of that life.

Arfaoui died on the evening of 18 September 2026 at the age of 70 after a serious illness. His wife, the artist Awatef Bejaoui Arfaoui, announced his death. Tunisian news outlets including Business News, Leaders, and Tunisie Numerique reported tributes that emphasised his engineering career and his stewardship of housing and infrastructure portfolios during the mid-2010s. He is remembered as a technocrat who moved from project leadership into cabinet responsibility for the physical fabric of the Tunisian state.