African crowdfunding site seeks funding… on crowdfunding site

There are a number of upcoming crowdfunding platforms in Africa, but this Nigerian-based startup is taking an interesting route — it’s launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds it needs to get its site up and running. Yes, a crowdfunding site is using another crowdfunding site. Meta.

Headed by two co-founders and five volunteers based in Abuja, GogoAfrika is currently seeking US$15 000 to cover the building of its website and the initial marketing and awareness costs. It is currently working on a beta version which is set to launch in early August, but if it meets its Indiegogo target, it hopes to build a richer “bespoke site” that it claims will make it easier for African entrepreneurs to get the money they need to start their businesses. While sites like KickStarter are only open to residents of the United States and UK, GogoAfrika co-founder Terry Nyikwagh says the aim is “to launch a crowdfunding platform that will not be limited to a country.”

“Other platforms such as StartMe, FundFind, SliceBiz, 234give, StartCrunch, etc are all local platforms targeting just a country — we want to build a platform for the entire continent,” says Nyikwagh. “We want to be able to help startups from Nigeria as well as Senegal, Tanzania and any African country raise funds. The crowdfunding market in Africa is small in terms of backers. Limiting a platform to a country further limits the donors thus making it difficult for projects to get funded.”

To make it easier for Africans to invest, the team will focus on providing support for a number of payment methods. For example, while PayPal isn’t supported in all African countries, GogoAfrika hopes to get around barriers potential backers may face by allowing them to invest via credit card, mobile phones and EFT. Unlike other sites, GogoAfrika will initially charge businesses a US$100 fee to register, as well as additional US$100 monthly fee, although it later plans to divert to the more popular commission-based model, taking a small percentage of funds raised.

By offering an African-based platform, the startup says it can potentially attract backers who would be interested in local solutions and be able to give even small amounts of money through one of the payment avenues. “African campaigns have not been really successfully on global platforms because of their local nature,” it says. “GogoAfrika therefore wishes to leverage on these developments and launch a standard and vibrant crowdfunding platform for African startups to raise funds from their friends, families and strangers who can understand and connect with their local ideas and concepts.”

Why go the Indiegogo route? Nyikwagh says it will give them first hand experience of the crowdfunding journey. If they get funded, they will learn about how to run a successful campaign. “If, on the contrary, we do not succeed, we would have learnt everything about the nature of a failed campaign,” he says. “Whichever way, we will have better experience and that will help us in guiding campaigns on our platform to success.”