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In developing countries, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have great difficulty in obtaining the necessary financial resources to effectively scale up and grow their businesses. Access to traditional growth capital, including debt and equity, is often prohibitely costly, due to such factors as insufficient legal and regulatory policies, and inadequate financial markets.

For SMEs competeing in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry and in ICT-enabled activities, the challenge of accessing growth capital is particularly acute, because these firms possess few tangible assets that can be leveraged as collateral for loans.

In order to better understand these challenges facing technology entrepreneurs, infoDev has commissioned this study on "Financing Technology Entrepreneurs & SME in Developing Countries: Challenges and Opportunities". This report summarizes the main findings of the work, including: (i) an assessment of the financing needs voiced by techno-entrepreneurs; (ii) a review of the financing opportunities available; and (iii) a series of suggestions regarding possible measures to alleviate the financing gap.

In addition, it provides an assessment of the financing conditions in ten selected countries: Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, Morocco, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

Separate country reports provide detailed results for the ten countries surveyed, which are available on infoDev’s website: www.infodev.org/financing.