Based just outside Tunisia’s capital city Tunis, the University of Manouba is a public university which was founded in 2000. Unlike many large African institutions, it continues to operate from a single 30-hectare campus.
It describes the campus as "conducive to the exchange and complements between the human, social, technical, experimental sciences, literature and the arts".
Under the motto "Criticism, Creativity and Conviviality", it has a broadly secular culture and aims to "form the citizen and transform the world". Its mission includes the desire to "respond to the needs of the country and be part of its development priorities".
In 2017 it enrolled 16,190 students in 14 disciplinary institutions. FLAHM, the faculty of letters, arts and humanities which dates back to 1986, formed the initial nucleus of the new university in 2000 and has sections covering six languages, history, geography and comparative religion, accounted for around a quarter of the students. The faculty opened a new German library in May 2019.
UMA points to a mix of "well-established and prestigious" institutions such as FLAHM, the ENMUT National School of Veterinary Medicine with the "young and dynamic" like the ESEN High School of the Digital Economy and ISES High School of Special Education as offering "a generational balance and a guarantee of sustainability".
Several sections, such as ENMUT, ESEN, ISES, the Higher Institute of Documentation (ISD), the Institute of Press and Information Sciences (IPSI) and the Institute for Research in the History of Contemporary Tunisia (ISHTC), founded in 1989, are thought to offer courses not found elsewhere in Tunisia.
