Crowdfunding for Youth Entrepreneurship in Tanzania

project summary

The literature highlights some of the limitations of traditional debt financing as a response to the youth entrepreneurs’ financing needs. Funding becomes a matter of friends and family, and local dealers all represent a limited and expensive means of obtaining funds for their entrepreneurial ventures. Recently, new alternative and innovative approaches to financing entrepreneurs and start-ups emerged.

The project ’crowdfunding for youth entrepreneurs in Tanzania’ (C4YET) seeks to generate an understanding of crowdfunding as an effective funding mechanism for (youth) entrepreneurs. To fill this knowledge gap and to build capacity on crowdfunding in the context of Tanzania, C4YET project employs state-of-the-art research methodologies. In the exploratory research phase, C4YET project will careful review existing literature relevant to both funder behaviors and biases and youth entrepreneurship in developing countries. In the mature phase, an extensive data collection will be carried in situ to understand local crowdfunding behaviors.

C4YET will seek to influence policy and strategies concerning crowd funding, including models applicable in developing countries. Specifically, in Tanzania, it will seek to recommend policy on crowd funding to stakeholders such as the Ministry of youth, Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and financial policy regulators such as the Capital Markets and Securities Authority (CMSA) and Bank of Tanzania.