The Tunis Center Facilitates Columbia SIPA Capstone Collaboration with Kumulus Water

As part of Columbia SIPA 2025-2026 Capstone Workshops in Sustainable Development Practice, a team of graduate students from Columbia University' School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) has been working with Kumulus Water, a French-Tunisian startup developing atmospheric water generation technology, on a project focused on supply chain optimization. The capstone model brings small student teams, finishing their MIA (Master in International Affairs) or their MPA (Master in Public Administration), together with external partners to work on practical, policy- and strategy-oriented challenges, producing actionable recommendations at the end of the process.

The Kumulus project examined ways to review and strengthen the company’s supply chain as it scales its operations across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, with particular attention to sourcing, production, logistics, and export pathways. Tunisia was central to this work, as Kumulus’s manufacturing and R&D base is located there.

Columbia Global Center Tunis helped facilitate this collaboration by supporting the connection between the SIPA team and the Tunisian ecosystem, and by liaising with the different parties as the project moved forward. The students travelled to Tunisia twice during Spring 2026 to pursue the fieldwork and engage directly with the company and its environment. 

In this way, the Center helped make possible a collaboration that linked Columbia students’ applied training with a Tunisia-based innovation actor working on water, sustainability, and technology. This is the fourth Capstone project the Tunis Center facilitated in Tunisia.

For more information about the program: https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/sipa-education/capstone-workshops 

And about Kumulus: https://www.kumuluswater.com/