Forty Tunisian entrepreneurs walked into London Tech Week 2026 ready to make their case to the world. For the second year running, Tunisia showed up with a full National Innovation Pavilion, putting its startups, SME leaders and ecosystem builders in the same rooms as investors, venture capital funds and policymakers from more than 90 countries. The pavilion was backed by the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations as part of the Innovative Startups and SMEs project, funded by the World Bank.
The event, which draws more than 60,000 participants annually to London, gave Tunisian innovators something beyond a booth and a brochure. It handed them direct access to the kind of international networks that can move a company from a domestic market to a global one. That kind of reach is exactly what the CDC has been pushing for, seeing internationalisation as essential to helping Tunisia's most promising businesses grow beyond their borders.
Three startups stood out during the investor pitching sessions. Meliorar, founded by Wiem Jedidi, Advocade AI from founder Ridha Memmi, and cybersecurity firm Pwn and Patch, led by Oussama Lessis, all drew real attention from investors and tech stakeholders. Their pitches made a quiet but pointed argument: sophisticated, scalable solutions are coming out of Tunisia, and the country is not waiting to be discovered.
The pavilion came together through a partnership with the Confederation of Citizen Enterprises of Tunisia, the Tunisia British Chamber of Commerce, FIPA-Tunisia, ATUGE UK and both the Tunisian and British embassies. Tunisia is leaning on its skilled talent base and its proximity to European markets as its competitive edge in a continent where the race for tech investment is getting louder by the year. Whether that pitch keeps landing at scale is the question worth watching.
Originally published by African Business.