Born at Jemmal in 1944, Baccouche travelled to France in 1965 to study at the Sorbonne where he obtained a degree in Linguistics in 1966 and an aggregation in Arabic in 1968.

Baccouche was awarded a State Doctorate in Linguistics in 1980 from the University of Paris Sorbonne.

[5] After the Tunisian Revolution, he served in the government as Minister of Education from January 2011 to December 2011.

After less than a year in that post, Khemaies Jhinaoui was appointed to succeed him in January 2016.

[6] Baccouche was then appointed as Secretary-General of the Arab Maghreb Union on 5 May 2016.