Crowdfunding for Youth Entrepreneurship in Tanzania
Info
Start date: 1 February, 2019 End date: 31 January, 2025 Project type: Research projects in countries with extended development cooperation (earlier Window 1) Project code: 18-15-TAN Countries: Tanzania Thematic areas: Economic development and value chains, Production, industry and labour market, Lead institution: Mzumbe University (MU), Tanzania Partner institutions: Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark Small Industries Development Organization (SIDO), Tanzania Project website: go to website (the site might be inactive) Project coordinator: Nsubili Isaga Mwalukasa Total grant: 11,812,788 DKKProject 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.
Outputs
Midterm report
The goals for the first part of the project have been achieved. Insights on the determinants of crowdfunding (the willingness to fund small business owners in Tanzania) have been gained through analysis of data from crowdfunding platforms, lab experiments simulating the crowdfunding situation, and qualitative research approaches. During the first part of the project, significant capacity building focused on experimental methods in development-, economics and management research has been accomplished. Both south and north research teams have developed various working papers ready for journal submission and are working on joint research output to further our understanding of crowdfunding as a viable channel for meeting the financial needs of youth entrepreneurs in Tanzania.
Three PhD students are conducting research studies in the C4YET project and now one PhD student developed and presented a paper at an international conference in the year 2021. The PhDs attended PhD courses in CBS, passed exams, proposal successfully accepted, one PhD in data analysis, and two PhDs candidates in data collection.