It’s time to take that light bulb moment and make it a working business. All SMEs need funding, and a good financing institution can give you everything you need, from capital and assistance to expert advice.
By Craig Falck for Africa Report.
Photograph: © Chris Noble | Dreamstime.com
There’s a glut of banks, micro-financers and development organisations out there, and sifting through them can be exhausting. Here are a couple we can recommend to kick-start your business.
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Standard Bank/Stanbic operates in Africa and globally with three business units (personal/ business banking, corporate/investment banking and wealth). It aims to advance sustainable development in developing nations, and this makes it a champion of assisting entrepreneurs to develop their businesses.
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GroFin assists with financing and gives expert advice to entrepreneurs and SMEs throughout their lifecycles. The enterprise took home the title award at the 2010 World Business & Development Award for making the Millennium Development Goals as their chief concern, providing up-and-coming businesspeople with the tools to develop their societies and economies.
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MYC4 is a unique development organisation – it’s an online marketplace where international investors finance entrepreneurs in Africa directly. The businesspeople “advertise” their businesses on the MYC4 website and financiers view the profiles. They then send their money to the profile that they believe has a strong future, and the money is in turn sent to the entrepreneurs to invest in developing their businesses. This promotes economic growth and the entrepreneurs are able to see the fruits of their labour blossom.
