Located in North Africa and spread over a coastal region, mountains, a hilly steppe and even some of the Sahara Desert, Tunisia benefits from significant natural resources (including phosphate and petroleum), in addition to other diversified economic activities. These advantages have led to an upper-middle income classification for the small country. However, many important challenges are still present in Tunisia, impeding social, economic, and political progress. Perhaps most famously, Tunisia is where the Arab Spring began in 2010, which led to the overthrow of the government. Despite emerging from the Arab Spring as a democracy, the country still faces a number of challenges, including high unemployment, continued corruption, and outsized impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on one of its main revenue streams (tourism).