Seabex helps farmers manage daily operations in the face of climate change: Agritech startup Seabex — based in France and Tunisia — has developed a remote, AI-based irrigation monitoring and control system using sensors to improve irrigation and conserve water through personalized insights in real-time, according to their LinkedIn. Seabex’s system can fully automate operations like irrigation and fertigation, while taking into account plot-specific data, the surrounding climate, and the varieties of plants the farmer wants to grow. It can also measure the impact and evolution of its suggested methods in order to continually adjust to changes in the weather or soil. The company currently works in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to provide resource-efficient irrigation recommendations without having to impose sensor data costs.

About Net-irrig by Seabex: Seabex also offers a Software as a Service service to farmers, who can access data and recommendations on their smartphones or computers. Net-irrig is a scalable and easy-to-use irrigation decision support tool developed by Seabex, according to the company website. The tool can monitor all irrigated plots in addition to 140 varieties which include field crops, canned vegetables, arboriculture and vineyards, to then provide personalized support, assistance, training from specialized advisors from the chambers of agriculture, all through a “simple and intuitive” interface which is accessible from anywhere, an is soon to be launched as an application. The suggestions can help farmers get a better yield and optimize water resources.

The idea was born from crop loss driven by increased droughts: Seabex farmer Amira Cheniour got the Seabex idea during a trip to southern Tunisia, where she met a farmer who lost a large part of his date crop to drought, she told We Are Tech Africa.

Tunisia’s drought is expected to become worse over time: Tunisia recorded the highest maximum temperatures on record, reaching 49.0°C, on June 23. This poses a sign of much hotter summers to come, which poses a sign of much hotter summers to come, Reuters said at the time. During COP27 last year, the North African country was singled out by the International Financial Corporation for being particularly at risk of worsening food security as the multilateral lender launched the USD 6 bn global food security platform.

Seabex has backing from EBRD: In April, Seabex was the third runner-up of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) AgVenture competition for food-tech start-ups. They received up to EUR 50k worth of tailored advisory service and a further EUR 10k grant.

There’s a growing demand for climate adaptation tech: As we enter into the El Nino warming phase of the larger El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather pattern, North Africa and Nile Basin countries are expected to face major challenges in managing extreme drought conditions. Morocco and its neighboring countries have already had to impose rations on the nation’s water consumption for example. Adaptation measures to counteract the effects of drought could include developing new agriculture strategies to prioritize growing crops with less water requirements, transitioning to modern irrigation methods to save on water consumption, and introducing crops that can handle a higher salinity, climate researcher at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics Muhammad Abid told Enterprise Climate earlier this year.