Crowdfunding works!

Development assistance is under pressure, with traditional ODA declining in many contexts, especially in Africa. This raises an important question: what other sources of financing can supplement development funding, particularly for smaller, locally driven initiatives that may struggle to attract conventional donor funding?

I’ve been experimenting with one possibility: crowdfunding on M-Changa.

In 2024, I raised around USD 3,000 for community libraries in Mathare informal settlements. I’m now crowdfunding the publication of my book, When Life Shatters, on this M-Changa page.

Neither campaign is going to solve a development-financing gap. But both have made me think about the potential of crowdfunding as a complement to ODA, particularly for community initiatives, social innovation, creative work, and locally owned projects.

Crowdfunding also changes the relationship between those who fund development and those who are directly involved in creating it. Instead of relying exclusively on institutions to decide which problems are worth funding, could we create more channels through which communities themselves mobilise resources around priorities they care about?

There are, of course, important questions around scale, accountability, inequality in access to digital platforms, and whether crowdfunding risks shifting responsibility from states and donors onto citizens.

But perhaps these are precisely the questions we should be discussing as development finance changes.

• Can crowdfunding meaningfully supplement ODA?

• Where does it work and where does it not?

• And what would it take to move it from an individual fundraising tool to a more recognised part of the development-finance ecosystem?

I’d be interested in hearing what others think.