Africa – once considered the lab for Chinese companies’ reach outside - is being relegated into a destination with too many risk factors. Safer political destinations and countries closer to home are likely to benefit from the shift. The readjustment has been in the works for some time but the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have made those subtle shifts more pronounced.

CPD Director Philip Seib has been quoted in Al Jazeera article concerning President's Obama's speech on economic aid to Tunisia and Egypt.

Tunisia and Ishinomaki, one of the hardest hit towns, have over the past two decades developed a strong bond, albeit an unusual one in being between a country and a small town. Ishinomaki has named three streets after Tunisia, and as one Japanese blogger put it, the relationship is like "true love between lovers hailing from different classes."

U.S. Under Secretary of State Judith McHale has traveled to Tunisia in a bid to expand America's public diplomacy effort in the North African country, the State Department said in a statement on Friday.

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith A. McHale will travel to Tunis and Sfax, Tunisia through April 17th, 2011. The Under Secretary arrived in Tunis on April 14th.

The European Union awaits "strong and clear" action from Tunisia to help stem the flow of migrants fleeing the country, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday.

When the protests started in the center of Tunisia in early December and made their way up north, thousands of tourists were evacuated from the resort towns. After the fall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the country saw a drop of 40 percent in the number of tourists in January.Things haven't improved since then either.

But scores of unemployed young men still slouch in the cafes in the afternoons, smoking water pipes, playing cards and sipping coffee. And at night, the fishing boats still ferry thousands of desperate workers across the Mediterranean, to Europe.