Tunisia’s state fund takes a regional roadshow inland

Regional roadshow is how Tunisia’s state startup money is leaving the capital. The Innovative Startups and SMEs project, financed by the World Bank and run by the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations with Smart Capital, opens its second interior tour in late September 2026. Stops are Le Kef on 28 September, Monastir on 6 October, Gafsa on 22 October and Zarzis on 23 October. The 2025 edition went to Bizerte, Kairouan, Sfax and Gabès. The point of the bus is not a panel. It is to put ANAVA and InnovaTech in front of founders who do not live on the Greater Tunis circuit. That is the punch. Tunisia wrote a Startup Act that other Maghreb governments still cite. The cheques did not follow the law inland. A Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies note puts 67 percent of bank branches on the coast, mainly Greater Tunis and the Centre-East, and calls the interior a financial desert. Startups took 1.8 percent of invested capital in 2024. About 80.5 percent of fundraising sat in Greater Tunis. H1 2026 disclosed almost no new equity deals. A roadshow does not fix that by itself. It admits the map is the product. Two instruments travel with the team. ANAVA is the euro-denominated fund of funds, billed as a first on the continent. Target size is 100 million euros. First close is 60 million euros: 40 million subscribed by CDC through a World Bank loan, 20 million from Germany’s KfW. ANAVA does not write founder cheques. It seeds child funds. Public notes have it committing about 45 million euros across ten vehicles, seven Tunisia-focused and three pan-African, names such as 216 Capital, Flat6Labs, Janngo and LoftyInc among them. DEAL 2.0 is the companion path for investment-ready tickets from 50,000 euros to 7 million euros, aimed at more than 200 startups. InnovaTech is the SME window, for innovative firms that will never wear a seed-deck costume. Each stop is meant to match project holders with investors, regional banks, SICARs, universities, technopoles and local professional bodies, with more weight this year on what each basin actually produces. Phosphate country is not a SaaS suburb. A coastal textile town is not a desert logistics pitch. If the rooms only hear a slide about ANAVA’s target size, the tour is theatre. If a Gafsa or Le Kef file reaches a child fund that would not have seen it in Lac 2, the state apparatus did something the private market has not. The MENA angle is the second city problem, not another label count. Morocco’s recent deal flow has looked deeper partly because local funds touch more than one coastal postcode. Egypt’s money still clusters in Cairo. Gulf capital hunts scale in Riyadh and Dubai. Tunisia is trying a public bus because the private bus never left Avenue Mohamed V. Startup Tunisia’s AIR grants already sprinkle Proof of Concept money nationwide. This roadshow is the later cheque trying to follow. Dilution is the catch. ANAVA’s 45 supported startups across a dozen African countries means Tunis-plus-interior is sharing a vehicle built to look continental. Caveats belong next to the 60 million euro close. A fund of funds is slow. Child funds still sit in the capital. A founder in Zarzis can attend a 23 October session and still lack a local partner who can diligence a seed. Equity drought in H1 2026 is the scoreboard, not the brochure. World Bank and KfW money arrives with procurement and FX rules that a regional SME will feel before it feels a term sheet. If the 2026 dates produce labelled files from Le Kef and Gafsa that close, the state fund looked past the tech elite. If the only output is four attendance lists, the interior remains a desert with better Wi-Fi for a day. Count inland term sheets, not kilometres on the road.