The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Retail Industry in Tunisia in 2025

Tunisia's retail sector entered 2025 with real momentum: a national push toward AI and digital skills, near‑80% internet penetration (close to 10 million users) and a strong talent pipeline - Tunisia placed second in the Africa 2025 AI Talent Readiness Index - make this a practical moment to deploy AI in stores and online (Tunisia AI potential for economic growth and job creation, Africa 2025 AI Talent Readiness Index - Tunisia ranking).

Global research shows the biggest retail wins in 2025 come from focused pilots - personalization, conversational shopping assistants and dynamic pricing - after retailers clean and unify customer data; think smart carts that recommend coupons at checkout or chatbots that guide grocery lists (Generative AI retail use cases: personalization, conversational assistants, and dynamic pricing).

For Tunisian retailers the “so what” is simple: combine local digital readiness with targeted data projects and upskill teams - short, practical courses like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15 Weeks) - registration teach tool use and promptcraft to turn pilots into measurable savings and better customer experiences.

Bootcamp	Length	Early bird cost	Registration
AI Essentials for Work	15 Weeks	$3,582	Register for Nucamp AI Essentials for Work (15 Weeks)
Solo AI Tech Entrepreneur	30 Weeks	$4,776	Register for Nucamp Solo AI Tech Entrepreneur (30 Weeks)

Tunisia's national AI strategy for 2021–2025 is anchored in a practical roadmap that spells out awareness, skills and ecosystem-building rather than lofty slogans: the Tunisia AI Roadmap sets clear objectives to acculturate and demystify AI, develop AI skills, establish cloud and HPC infrastructure, adopt data and open‑data policies, promote networking and run pilot projects across public and private sectors (Tunisia AI Roadmap (OECD.AI)).

That national plan sits alongside the broader National Digital Strategy 2021–2025, which reinforces legal and governance reform, connectivity and hosting capacity, cyber security, public sector digital transformation and targeted capacity building to ensure the country can scale pilots into services (National Digital Strategy 2021–2025).

Complementing these moves, a Public Procurement for Innovation programme is designed to adapt e‑procurement rules and open market access for startups, a practical lever to get AI projects from labs into Tunisian shops and government services (Public Procurement for Innovation).

The combined picture is concrete: build the infrastructure, train the people, change procurement and run pilots - think national-level plumbing and experiments rather than one-off proofs of concept.

Field	Detail
Start Year	2021
End Year	2025
Responsible organisations	Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy; National Research and Innovation Programme (PNRI); High Authority for Public Procurement (HAICOP)
Status	Inactive – initiative complete
Target sectors	Public governance, Innovation, Digital Economy

Tunisia's macro backdrop for 2025 matters for any retailer thinking about AI pilots: headline growth accelerated sharply in Q2 - 3.2% year‑on‑year, up from 1.8% in Q1 and lifting H1 growth to about 2.4% - signaling a pickup in local demand driven by stronger agriculture and manufacturing (see the Q2 update from ProfileNews).

That momentum is mirrored in international forecasts that vary by method - the World Bank projects a more modest 1.9% for 2025 while industry forecasters at BMI (Fitch Solutions) lifted their 2025 GDP outlook to roughly 2.5% after the strong Q2 - so retailers should plan for a cautiously improving market, not a boom.

For AI projects this means more predictable footfall and marginally higher consumer confidence to support personalization pilots, dynamic pricing experiments and inventory‑optimization models, but persistent risks remain (inflation, trade pressures and public debt) that can blunt discretionary spending.

A simple rule of thumb: prioritize AI pilots that reduce operating costs or boost repeat purchases, because even a small percentage lift in conversion can outsize the benefit when macro growth is steady but modest - imagine a loyalty engine that turns a 1% conversion bump into meaningful monthly cash flow.

Indicator	Value / Note	Source
Q1 2025 growth	1.8%	ProfileNews Q2 2025 Tunisia economic growth report
Q2 2025 growth	3.2% (strongest since late 2022)	ProfileNews Q2 2025 Tunisia economic growth report
H1 2025 cumulative	2.4%	ProfileNews Q2 2025 Tunisia economic growth report
2025 forecast (World Bank)	1.9%	World Bank Tunisia 2025 growth forecast - May 2025
2025 forecast (BMI / Fitch Solutions)	2.5%	BMI / Fitch Solutions Tunisia GDP outlook - Aug 2025

"Tunisia continues to show resilience amid a complex global and domestic environment," said Alexandre Arrobbio, World Bank Country Manager for Tunisia.

Tunisia's retail IT teams are turning AI from a buzzword into practical plumbing: AIOps platforms are being piloted to tame alert fatigue, automate triage and keep POS, e‑commerce and inventory systems humming so stores can focus on customers rather than firefighting; industry writeups note that AIOps delivers real‑time visibility, predictive alerts and measurable cost savings for busy IT shops (Riverbed blog: How AIOps increases efficiencies and ROI, Fortinet: AIOps - the future of IT operations).

At the same time, local infrastructure and skills investments - notably Novation City's new AI innovation hub with NVIDIA DGX access and free DLI courses - give retailer IT departments a runway to experiment with computer vision for shelf monitoring, accelerated recommendation engines and faster model training close to Tunisian universities and startups (NVIDIA: Novation City Tunisia AI innovation hub).

The practical result: smaller retailers can prioritize quick wins - automated ticketing, predictive outages and inventory alerts - that save hours per week, while larger groups use GPU clusters and trained local talent to move pilots into production; picture a dashboard that spots a looming outage before the checkout queues grow, turning prevention into profit.

“Novation City has launched several key AI initiatives to strengthen the ecosystem, with NVIDIA's support being instrumental in empowering AI startups and advancing AI skills,” said Anas Rochdi, chief innovation officer at Novation City.

Tunisia's retail tech stack is becoming a pragmatic mix of local GPU firepower, data‑driven agents and practical automation: Novation City's NVIDIA‑backed AI hub in Sousse gives startups and retailer IT teams access to DGX infrastructure and free Deep Learning Institute courses so models can be trained and iterated close to universities (Novation City AI innovation hub in Sousse (NVIDIA blog)); at the application layer, Databricks' analysis of AI agents shows clear paths for autonomous supply decisions, hyper‑personalized offers and frontline assistants that turn data into fast, operational guidance - exactly the kinds of systems Tunisian retailers can pilot to move from spreadsheets to real‑time recommendations (Databricks analysis: AI agents transforming the retail industry).

Closer to the back office, Tunisian firms already adopt ATS screening, chatbots and scheduling automation as low‑friction wins for HR and customer flows, though research flags cost, bias and change‑management as real constraints (Study: AI and the recruitment process in the Tunisian context).

Put together, the stack looks like: local DGX and training to build models, agentic AI to automate routine decisions, and lightweight automation in HR and service - so a small team in Sousse can prototype a personalization engine on the same campus where the DGX sits and then test it in a nearby store within weeks, turning theory into measurable retail uplift.

Component	Typical Tunisian use / evidence
Infrastructure (GPU & training)	Novation City DGX access + NVIDIA DLI courses for startups and researchers (Novation City AI innovation hub in Sousse (NVIDIA blog))
Agentic / operational AI	Autonomous supply decisions, hyper‑personalization, frontline assistants per Databricks analysis (Databricks analysis: AI agents transforming the retail industry)
HR & service automation	ATS screening, chatbots, scheduling automation - practical, lower‑cost wins but with bias/cost concerns (Study: AI and the recruitment process in the Tunisian context)

“Novation City has launched several key AI initiatives to strengthen the ecosystem, with NVIDIA's support being instrumental in empowering AI startups and advancing AI skills,” said Anas Rochdi, chief innovation officer at Novation City.

Top AI use cases for Tunisian retailers in 2025 are practical and tightly focused: hyper‑personalized product recommendations and loyalty integration, already proven in Carrefour Tunisia AI-powered recommendations case study, conversational shopping assistants for grocery sites and smart carts that suggest coupons or recipes in real time, and dynamic pricing for convenience stores to protect margins while staying competitive, as outlined in the Publicis Sapient generative AI retail use cases guide.

Equally important in Tunisia are demand forecasting and inventory optimization to cut stockouts and waste, AI‑driven merchandising and shelf‑monitoring to keep displays shoppable, and virtual knowledge assistants for B2B or store staff to speed answers and reduce training time - small pilots here can turn a 1% conversion bump into steady monthly cash flow.

Start small, measure results, and scale the wins that save hours or shrink shrinkage: the combination of personalization, automation and smarter merchandising is where Tunisian retailers will see tangible ROI in 2025, as discussed in the StartUs Insights guide to AI in retail.

“If retailers aren't doing micro-experiments with generative AI, they will be left behind.” - Rakesh Ravuri, CTO at Publicis Sapient

For Tunisian retailers the sensible technology play in 2025 is hybrid: combine cloud-hosted analytics and model training with edge appliances that keep stores running fast, private and resilient - think right-sized NUC‑style appliances in the back room that power POS, smart‑shelf sensors and low‑latency personalization without depending on a flaky connection (retail edge computing HCI solutions).

Cloud POS brings easy updates and centralized reporting, but an edge-first layer preserves uptime, reduces bandwidth and keeps sensitive payments and PII local when needed, a practical balance that vendors like NCR Voyix Edge retail edge platform and platforms described above recommend.

For AI use cases - real‑time fraud checks, shelf monitoring and checkout automation - Edge AI architectures (on-device models plus selective cloud sync) cut latency and cost while enabling offline operation and faster experiments; the result is a store that can push a price change or a targeted coupon in milliseconds and keep selling even if the internet drops (edge AI for POS and retail systems).

A vivid, practical test: deploy a compact, self‑healing edge box per store to run local recommendations and camera analytics, then centralize long‑term learning in the cloud - this “local first, selective cloud sync” approach turns each boutique or grocer into a real‑time, privacy‑aware node of a national retail chain while keeping operational overhead manageable.

“In a retail store, edge is in some ways just a distributed cloud – but a vastly different type of cloud.”

Tunisia's partner landscape in 2025 blends nimble local agencies, community networks and high‑level convenings - start your shortlist with directories like Sortlist directory of AI agencies in Tunisia, which lists options from low‑cost entrants (Convergen and Sierra Bravo from about €1,000) to larger providers (Digital Friendly from €10,000) and highly rated boutiques such as The Road – Agence Digitale (4.9, Tunis) and Interacti Marketing Agency (Sfax); these firms cover marketing, e‑commerce and practical AI projects and give retailers clear price and team‑size signals.

Pair vendor selection with ecosystem ties - membership in the Tunisian AI Society (TAIS) membership and research collaborations connects retailers to academic talent, practitioners and research collaborations - while forums like the International Forum of L'Économiste Maghrébin - Euro‑Tunisian matchmaking forum have pushed Euro‑Tunisian matchmaking and B2B platforms that help scale pilots into cross‑border partnerships.

Practically speaking, mix a local agency for fast experiments (chatbots, personalization pilots) with TAIS contacts and forum‑sourced integrators for larger supply‑chain or inventory work; that triangle - agency + community + strategic forum - keeps projects lean, locally anchored and ready to scale without unnecessary vendor lock‑in.

Vendor	Location	From (AI services)
Celestial wave digital	Tunis	€5,000
The Road - Agence Digitale	Tunis	€3,000
Convergen Agence Marketing Digital	El Kram	€1,000
Digital Friendly Agency	Tunisia	€10,000
Interacti Marketing Agency	Sfax	€6,000
Sierra Bravo Intelligence	Carthage	€1,000

"There is no better response to global geopolitical upheavals than unity. And there is no time to waste if we want to open a new industrial chapter rooted in innovation and responsibility," - Hédi Méchri, as quoted at the International Forum of L'Économiste Maghrébin.

Regulation, governance and ethics are the guardrails that let Tunisian retailers scale AI without trading trust for speed: Tunisia's national AI Roadmap (2021–2025) sets practical goals - awareness, skills, cloud/HPC infrastructure, open‑data policies and public‑private pilot projects - while remaining a non‑binding guidance document shepherded by the Ministry of Industry, PNRI and HAICOP (Tunisia AI Roadmap (OECD AI Dashboard)); at the same time, a digitized procurement backbone (TUNEPS) has already proven its value by publishing tenders online, expanding SME access (3,350 e‑bids and 6,400 procurements by 2019) and removing the old need for suppliers to travel to Tunis to bid (TUNEPS e-procurement transparency and SME access (SDG16.plus)).

Practical AI governance for retailers should follow procurement best practice - ask vendors what

AI-powered

actually means, require vendor vetting, data security and explainability, and build human-in-the-loop checks - echoing enterprise templates that stress data privacy, bias mitigation, ongoing monitoring and vendor criteria (AI procurement policy guide (FairNow)).

The so‑what: firms that pair TUNEPS‑style transparency with a simple AI procurement policy (data controls + bias checks + human oversight) can access better suppliers and avoid common harms - because a single, explainable supplier scorecard can stop biased automation from becoming an expensive, invisible problem.

Initiative	Key points / evidence
Tunisia AI Roadmap (2021–2025)	Non‑binding guidance; objectives include awareness, skills, infrastructure, open data and pilots; responsible: Ministry of Industry, PNRI, HAICOP (Tunisia AI Roadmap (OECD AI Dashboard))
TUNEPS e‑procurement	Promotes transparency and SME access; supported 3,350 e‑bids and 6,400 procurements by 2019; reduced travel to Tunis for bidders; SME procurement target introduced but only 17% awarded to SMEs by 2020

Conclusion & next steps for Tunisian retailers in 2025: Tunisia's policy momentum and local talent make this the year to move from pilots to repeatable practice - start by locking down the fundamentals (clean, unified customer data and clear KPIs), run fast micro‑experiments that prioritize cost reduction or repeat purchases, and choose hybrid architectures (edge + cloud) so stores stay resilient when connectivity dips.

Follow the national playbook: the updated OECD Tunisia AI Roadmap (2021–2025) stresses skills, infrastructure and public‑private pilots; Publicis Sapient's playbook recommends small, measurable generative AI experiments that only scale after data foundations are solid (Publicis Sapient generative AI retail playbook and use cases); and practical upskilling - courses like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15 weeks) - puts non‑technical staff on the front line of promptcraft and tool use.

Start with a handful of micro‑projects (loyalty personalization, inventory forecasting, conversational assistants), measure conversion and cost impact, then stitch winners into procurement and governance checklists aligned with TUNEPS transparency.

The payoff is tangible: small conversion uplifts compound across a national chain, and retailers that pair clear governance with quick experiments will turn Tunisia's AI readiness into durable commercial advantage.

Next step	Why it matters	Quick resource
Clean & unify customer data	Foundation for reliable personalization and LLM work	Publicis Sapient data-first guidance for generative AI in retail
Run focused micro-experiments	Fast feedback, limited cost, clear ROI gating	Publicis Sapient generative AI pilot playbook for retail
Upskill frontline teams	Prompts, tools and governance reduce vendor risk	Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15 weeks)
Align with national roadmap	Leverage public pilots, procurement and infrastructure	OECD Tunisia AI Roadmap (2021–2025)

“Using artificial intelligence in planning is now a necessity. Those who fail to adapt risk marginalization.” - Mohamed El Kou, President of Tunisia's Development Planning Commission