Startups

Tunisia's RoboCare Raises from 216 Capital to Scale AI Precision Farming

O
Olivia
June 25, 2026 · 4 min read

Precision farming is often pitched at industrial-scale agribusiness in wealthy markets. RoboCare, a Tunisian agritech, is proving the same AI can serve North African and Middle Eastern growers — and it has just secured a six-figure investment from 216 Capital to take its farm-intelligence platform across the region.

  • Round: Six-figure investment (undisclosed exact amount)
  • Investor: 216 Capital
  • Sector: Agritech / AI & precision agriculture
  • Founded: 2020 by Imen Hbiri
  • Based in: Tunisia

Agriculture across North Africa and the Middle East is being squeezed from two directions at once: worsening water scarcity and climbing costs for fertiliser, fuel and labour. In that environment, guesswork is expensive. A farmer who irrigates a day too late or sprays a field that didn't need it loses money and resources that are increasingly hard to replace. RoboCare's pitch is that better data turns those decisions from instinct into precision — and that the savings more than pay for the technology. It's a timely proposition in a region where the margin for error in farming keeps shrinking.

What RoboCare does

Founded in 2020 by Imen Hbiri, RoboCare helps farmers detect crop disease and stress early by fusing satellite imagery, drone data, IoT sensors, weather data and agronomic expertise into a single AI-driven farm-management platform. Rather than generic global models, the system is built around region-specific data for North Africa and the Middle East, with a particular focus on olive trees, cereals and processing tomatoes — crops that define the region's agriculture.

The results

The value proposition is concrete. According to the company, farmers using its platform have reported up to 35% water savings, up to 25% reductions in agricultural inputs, and up to 20% higher yields. In water-stressed geographies where every litre and every input cost matters, those numbers are not incremental — they can be the difference between a profitable season and a failed one.

Inside the deal

The investment from 216 Capital, a Tunisian VC firm, is designed to fund RoboCare's next growth stage: accelerating commercial expansion into new African and Middle Eastern markets, strengthening its commercial teams to drive adoption among major agribusiness players, and improving its AI models to handle new crops and agricultural contexts. For 216 Capital, the deal fits a thesis of backing high-potential tech startups that address the continent's biggest economic, social and environmental challenges.

Why it matters

RoboCare is a rare 2026 African agritech raise built on software and AI rather than physical assets — and it's led by a female founder in a sector where they remain underrepresented. It also underscores North Africa's rise as an agritech hub and the growing appetite for climate-smart tools that help farmers do more with less water. As drought and input costs pressure agriculture across the region, data-driven decision-making is fast becoming essential infrastructure.

Why region-specific AI matters

Most precision-agriculture platforms are trained on data from large industrial farms in North America or Europe, and that context rarely transfers cleanly to a Tunisian olive grove or a Moroccan tomato field. RoboCare's decision to build around region-specific data — local crops, local pests, local weather patterns — is what makes its recommendations actionable for farmers in North Africa and the Middle East. In a part of the world defined by water scarcity and rising input costs, the ability to know exactly when to irrigate, treat or harvest is not a marginal gain; it can determine whether a season is profitable. That specificity is also a competitive moat: rivals can't simply copy a model trained on someone else's fields.

What to watch next

With 216 Capital's backing, RoboCare's priorities are commercial expansion and model refinement. The near-term test is adoption among large agribusiness players, who can deploy the platform across thousands of hectares and validate the water- and yield-savings figures at scale. As the company enters new markets, it will need to adapt its AI to unfamiliar crops and conditions without diluting the accuracy that is its selling point. If it succeeds, RoboCare could become one of the clearest examples of software-led, climate-smart agritech scaling out of North Africa — and a reminder that the continent's agri-innovation isn't only about hardware.

Track the raises that matter

Startup Map Africa follows the funding rounds, founders and events shaping the continent's ecosystem — so you see the signal before it's a headline.

Details as disclosed via 216 Capital, Disrupt Africa, Wamda and public announcements, June 2026. Figures are as reported.