The first ever support program for crowd funding in Africa has launched under The Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC)-an initiative of the World Bank and its global entrepreneurship program info Dev with its pilot phase helping six clean-tech ventures design, develop, and launch their online crowd funding campaigns.

Crowd funding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people through an online platform and while this is in its infancy in developing countries, the potential is significant, according to the World Bank.

The World Bank/infoDev study-Crowd funding’s Potential for the Developing World-estimates that the market could reach up to $90-96 billion per year by 2025.

The results also show that from an income perspective the number of households in developing economies that could participate in crowd funding ranges from 240 million to 344 million.

“By helping entrepreneurs connect with a global pool of investors, crowd funding may represent a new tool that can address a funding problem faced by many local green ventures,” said Diarietou Gaye, World Bank Country Director Kenya in a statement Monday.

“The development of a competitive clean technology sector will be instrumental toward a low-carbon economy and Kenya is taking important steps to reduce carbon emissions and increase resilience to climate change in accordance with its National Climate Change Action Plan,” he added.

To help Kenyan entrepreneurs tap into the crowdfunding market, the Kenya CIC, with the technical support of Crowd fund Capital Advisors (CCA) has developed a set of advisory services specifically designed to help local green ventures conduct effective crowd funding campaigns and utilize the full range of crowd funding platforms focused on African projects.