Tunisia's Startups Raised Almost Nothing in the First Half of 2026 — Morocco Raised $29 Million

Two independent trackers put Tunisian startup funding at roughly $300,000 across three deals, with no disclosed equity round at all. A 2025 labour law and unfinished currency reform are the causes most often named.

TUNIS — Tunisian startups raised roughly $300,000 in the first six months of 2026, across three transactions, according to data from the regional platform Wamda reported by African Manager. Over the same period, Moroccan startups raised $29.4 million across eight deals, and the wider Middle East and North Africa region raised $1.7 billion across 242 deals.

A second tracker, Launch Base Africa, reached a starker version of the same conclusion: not a single disclosed equity round closed in Tunisia in the first half of the year. Its own count for the period recorded one deal — a six-figure investment by the Tunis fund 216 Capital in the agritech startup RoboCare, which is building an AI platform for precision agriculture. The two counts differ on what qualifies as a disclosed round; they agree on the order of magnitude, which is close to zero.

The comparison with a year earlier is the sharpest figure in the data. In the first half of 2025, according to Launch Base Africa, six Tunisian companies raised about $5.4 million, among them a $3.5 million round for the water-harvesting startup Kumulus and smaller raises by Dabchy, GENOW, EasyBank and Pixii Motors.

What changed

The cause most consistently named is a labour reform. Law 16-2025, passed in May 2025, effectively bars subcontracting for roles deemed permanent, requiring companies to hire core staff on open-ended contracts. The government presented it as closing a loophole that had kept workers in perpetual temporary employment — a real abuse, and the reform's stated purpose is not in dispute.

The side effects landed on the startup economy. Adecco, which had operated in Tunisia for 23 years and placed more than 100,000 workers, announced in August 2025 that it would exit the market, saying the new rules made its model unviable, Launch Base Africa reported. For early-stage companies that rely on outsourced developers or support teams, the law leaves two options: absorb the cost of converting those workers into permanent employees, or prove the roles are genuinely temporary — a difficult legal threshold.

That matters more in Tunisia than it would elsewhere, because subcontracting was load-bearing. Neither InstaDeep nor Expensya, the country's two largest startup exits, achieved their liquidity events through Tunisian corporate entities: both built holding structures abroad — InstaDeep in the United Kingdom, Expensya in France — to satisfy investors' fund structures and navigate currency controls, while their engineering talent stayed in Tunisia and served the foreign parent under service contracts. Remove that arrangement and one of the country's durable advantages goes with it.

The reform that is half-done

The second constraint is hard currency. Until December 2025 residents could not legally hold foreign-currency accounts, pushing freelancers and startups earning in euros or dollars toward costly intermediaries and offshore wallets. Parliament changed that in the 2026 Finance Law, approving the amendment by 69 votes to 17 with 17 abstentions — a measure that had failed a year earlier.

It has not yet taken effect in practice. Implementation depends on central bank circulars that have not been issued, and transaction limits, eligibility and bank compliance rules remain undefined. Freelancers report that branches are still unequipped to process applications, and many continue to receive international payments through peer-to-peer crypto networks rather than the banking system.

What the comparison suggests

Morocco's first half offers the counterfactual: a $15 million Series A for the property-tech firm Yakeey backed by Enza Capital, the IFC, Beltone VC and CDG Invest; $4 million for the fintech WafR from a syndicate including LoftyInc, Attijariwafa, Al Mada and UM6P; and seed rounds for Enakl, Z.systems and Weego, several touched by the same fast-emerging local investor, the Azur Innovation Fund. Capital has not left North Africa. It has moved 1,900 kilometres west.

The implication in both trackers' analysis is that Tunisia's binding constraint is not the Startup Act, which remains in place, but the rules around it — a labour code that penalises the flexible hiring early-stage firms depend on, and a currency reform whose text passed while its circulars did not. Neither requires new money to fix.