Abstract
The aim of this paper is to identify if African entrepreneurs, individuals and/or SMEs are currently using international crowdfunding platforms to fund their projects, which categories are popularly funded, and how can an African country strengthen the quality of entrepreneurial projects in order to receive full funding on an international crowdfunding platform. This paper has shown that the most active countries on the two leading crowdfunding websites are Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. This is attributed to the various business and technology hubs, High Internet and social media penetration rates in these countries. The most supported categories are Art and creative related projects as well as social cause projects however the highest amount of total funded received is in the technology category. Therefore this paper has shown that the “crowd” is willing to funded viable African business ventures, which in turn reinforces crowdfunding’s potential in financing start-ups in Africa.