LelapaFund Crowdinvestment Platform

LelapaFund was our first start-up venture, co-founded by Elizabeth Howard and Jerry Crossan and launched in 2015. We built a full-stack equity crowdfunding platform whose mission was to connect African investors in the diaspora with African SMEs back home. We grew the community to 2500+ investors and entrepreneurs, and raised $200k in grant, debt and equity finance for our pilot SMEs. We hit many milestones and many hurdles. We developed an expertise in regulations for crowdfunding in Africa and wrote a full regulatory framework for securities-based crowdfunding to serve as a benchmark for local regulators. We co-founded an industry association, the African Crowdfunding Association, to lead regulatory advocacy on the continent. We took the hard decision to work full time on implementing regulations, without which the industry will not survive, and closed LelapaFund in 2018. Our work is ongoing at the African Crowdfunding Association.