Written By | Torch Media Africa
North Africa's smallest major economy is consolidating fintech rails and courting AI infrastructure investment — even as its flagship startup law shows signs of fatigue
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Tunisia is not the first name that comes up in conversations about African tech — that usually runs through Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, or Cape Town. But across 2025 and into 2026, the country has quietly assembled three distinct threads of a digital strategy: a consolidating mobile payments market, an emerging AI infrastructure node, and a startup law being reworked because the easy gains have already been captured.
Mobile Payments Go Mainstream, Then Get Unified
According to Central Bank of Tunisia figures, mobile transactions surged 81 percent in 2025, reaching 8.4 million operations worth roughly 1.769 billion dinars (~$616 million). The jump was attributed largely to integration of the E-Houwiya national digital identity system with the Paysmart verification platform.
Two product launches bookend this growth. In July 2025, the national postal operator launched a free e-Dinar Wallet aimed at deepening financial inclusion. Then, in May 2026, the Central Bank unified the fragmented mobile-payment landscape under a single consumer brand — TUNPAY — bringing sixteen payment providers under one mark. New rules taking effect in 2026 also make digital transaction trails mandatory for certain payments, nudging businesses toward mobile rails.
Novation City and the Bid for AI Infrastructure
Tunisia's AI pitch centers on Novation City, a planned innovation campus positioning itself as a continental hub for AI and deep-tech research. Built around centers of excellence in AI, Industry 4.0, and smart transport, the campus includes access to NVIDIA DGX infrastructure — giving African AI startups and researchers compute capacity otherwise difficult to access locally.
The government has paired this with a broader digitalization push: 138 projects planned to modernize public administration between 2025 and 2026, with 18 dedicated to AI, digital training, and innovation. In early 2026, Tunisia's Health Ministry partnered with Tunisia Telecom to expand connectivity and deploy AI tools in healthcare. Underlying infrastructure has improved too: 4G now reaches nearly 95 percent of the population, with commercial 5G rolling out in 2025.
The Startup Act at Eight Years: Strong Brand, Weakening Pipeline
Tunisia's 2018 Startup Act gave registered startups up to eight years of tax exemptions, capital gains relief, and customs advantages. The Startup Tunisia program added a €200 million fund-of-funds. Results look healthy: startups raised $400 million in 2024 — a 60 percent increase — with fintech pulling in $150 million. The ecosystem grew 36.6 percent through 2025, and StartupBlink now ranks Tunisia 84th globally and second in North Africa.
But the headline numbers sit awkwardly beside a troubling pipeline statistic: newly labeled startups collapsed from 224 in 2020 to just 3 in 2023. That's the strongest evidence yet that the law's initial wave has worked through the system, and newer entrants are hitting administrative complexity, slow funding access, and regulatory uncertainty — particularly acute for fintech founders lacking dedicated legal status. The government's planned 'Startup Act 2.0' aims to address these gaps, though its rollout will be the real test.
A Small Market Punching Above Its Weight, With Real Limits
Taken together, the three threads point to a country trying to compensate for limited scale with policy density and sequencing: get payment rails and digital identity working, attract a flagship AI infrastructure anchor, and rely on a maturing legal framework even as it needs a refresh.
Tunisia's challenges are real — a domestic market too small for startups aiming purely at scale, foreign exchange rules complicating cross-border fundraising, and competition for AI investment from larger neighbors. But the combination of near-universal 4G, a consolidating mobile payments market, a credible AI infrastructure pitch, and an eight-year-old startup scaffold gives Tunisia a more coherent digital strategy than its modest size suggests. Whether TUNPAY's unification and Novation City's NVIDIA partnership translate into sustained growth and a revived pipeline — rather than well-publicized pilots — will be the clearest signal by the time 2026 closes.
