RoboCare secures 216 Capital backing to expand abroad

Published: 2026-06-24T09:07:07.000Z

The Arab world's startup conversation tends to orbit the Gulf and Egypt, which is why a modest deal out of Tunisia is worth pausing on. RoboCare, a Tunisian agritech building AI powered precision agriculture tools, has secured a fresh six figure investment from venture firm 216 Capital to expand across Africa and the Middle East.

The Arab world's startup conversation tends to orbit the Gulf and Egypt, which is exactly why a modest deal out of Tunisia is worth pausing on. RoboCare, a Tunisian agritech company building AI powered precision agriculture tools, has secured a fresh six figure investment from the venture firm 216 Capital. The amount is small, but the purpose is ambitious, since the money is meant to fund RoboCare's expansion across Africa and the Middle East. For a startup born in the southern Tunisian city of Sfax, the goal of scaling regionally is a meaningful step up, and it reflects how North African founders are increasingly looking beyond their home markets. What RoboCare actually does sits at the intersection of two pressures squeezing farmers everywhere in the region, namely water scarcity and rising input costs. Founded in 2020 by Imen Hbiri, the company has built a platform that pulls together satellite imagery, drone monitoring, IoT sensors, weather data and agronomic expertise into a single operating system for farms. Its AI models analyse those data streams to detect crop stress early, flag disease risks, and recommend more efficient use of water, fertiliser and pesticides. The results it cites are the kind farmers can actually measure rather than vague promises of digital transformation, including up to 35 percent water savings, a 25 percent reduction in agricultural inputs, and a 20 percent increase in crop yields. That focus on quantifiable outcomes is the heart of why the company stands out. Agriculture is one of the most resource intensive sectors in the region, and pressure on water supplies is not going to ease, so technologies that deliver concrete efficiency gains are drawing renewed investor attention. RoboCare also differentiates itself from generic farm software in an important way, since its AI is trained on local data for crops that matter specifically to the region, including olive trees, cereals and industrial tomatoes. A model tuned to Mediterranean and MENA farming conditions is far more useful to a Tunisian or Moroccan grower than a one size fits all platform built for the American Midwest. The investor's logic fits neatly with that thesis. 216 Capital, a Tunis based seed and pre-seed venture firm founded in 2021 with a roughly nine million euro pool and a global footprint stretching to London and Dubai, frames the deal as backing startups that deliver concrete answers to the continent's economic, social and environmental challenges. RoboCare already monitors several thousand hectares under intelligent surveillance and has generated thousands of agronomic alerts, giving it the traction a growth stage cheque is designed to build on. The funding will go toward entering new markets, strengthening its commercial teams, and refining its AI models for different agricultural environments. The regional read is about food security as much as technology. Across the Middle East and North Africa, governments and investors are increasingly treating agritech as strategic rather than niche, given how exposed the region is to climate stress and import dependence. A Tunisian company using locally trained AI to help farmers save water and lift yields is exactly the kind of homegrown solution the region needs, and RoboCare's push into African and Gulf markets is a small but telling sign of North African innovation traveling outward.