The Kenya Climate Innovation Centre (KCIC) has launched the first-ever support programme for crowdfunding in East Africa to help startups in mobilizing online citizens for crowdfunding campaigns.
KCIC, an initiative of the World Bank and its global entrepreneurship programme infoDev, has already benefited six clean-tech ventures through design, development, and have been able to launch their online crowdfunding campaigns.
According to the World Bank/infoDev study Crowdfunding’s Potential for the Developing World, the market could reach up to US$90-96 billion per year by 2025. The report further states that from an income perspective the number of households in developing economies with a potential of participating in crowdfunding range from 240 million to 344 million.
“By helping entrepreneurs connect with a global pool of investors, crowdfunding may represent a new tool that can address a funding problem faced by many local green ventures,” says World Bank Country Director for Kenya, Diarietou Gaye.
KCIC, with the technical support of Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA) has developed a set of advisory services targeting local green ventures in order to help them tap the full potential of crowdfunding through effective crowdfunding campaigns and platforms focused on African projects.
“Despite the growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises interested in crowdfunding in emerging markets, information and data on the topic is scarce and difficult to find. The ultimate goal of this project is to assist local ventures in making the most of this innovative form of financing,” notes CEO of the KCIC, Edward Mungai.
Through a national pitching competition held last August by KCIC to select a first pool of local ventures that had ‘crowdfunding potential’ six companies-Wanda Organic, Global Supply Solutions, iCoal Concepts, Skynotch Energy Africa, Develatech, and the Human Needs Project emerged victors of the competition. They have already received four months of mentorship and training to design and test their crowdfunding strategies.
Four of these clean-tech ventures; Wanda Organic, Global Supply Solutions, iCoal Concepts, and Skynotch Energy Africa launched their campaigns on Indiegogo, while the other two will go live later in March, 2015.
The six companies will provide data to the KCIC based on their campaigns which will create better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of crowdfunding in the country.
