ENTERPRISE54 – The biggest challenge for the average entrepreneur in Africa is accessing finance to fund their startups. The banks hardly give budding entrepreneurs loans, raising money from family and friends can be a nightmare. The frustration has led many entrepreneurs to throw in the towel.

The next option is usually to save from their earnings. However, in most cases unforeseen circumstances can wipe out these savings leading to an abandonment of their startup dreams. Few entrepreneurs have actually heard of crowdfunding, and the opportunities it provides for the entrepreneur.

Crowd funding is a collaborative process of financial support from a large group of individuals, usually via the internet, to fund a business, project or idea. Crowd funding is an effective alternative method of raising finance for people with creative projects to fund their goals. It involves soliciting and collecting relatively small amounts of money from a large number of people. With 60 million internet users in Nigeria, many already making financial transactions online (Interswitch, Paypal, Paga), this is a very large number of people a budding entrepreneur can reach through crowd funding.

In Nigeria, crowdfunding has not been fully embraced compared to the US where $1.5 billion was raised in 2011 via crowd funding. Major players in crowd funding include sites like kickstarter.com, indiegogo.com and rockethub.com.

The launch of Funda Solva (funder solver) in Nigeria is taking a step towards providing an alternative source of finance for entrepreneurs using the concept of crowd funding. Funda targets and markets your project to a wider audience and increases the chances of a very large number of people contributing cash to your project. Paypal is the payment gateway on Funda. Paypal’s presence in Nigeria makes it easy for anyone with a naira debit card to make a contribution. In fact, anyone in the WORLD can contribute to your project.

So, Dear Entrepreneur, before you apply for that job, visit www.funda.solva.com.ng, sign up and tell the world about your startup.