Community-Led Business Models: Lessons from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Syria

March 21, 2025

On January 29, ThinkPlace and HCDExchange hosted a webinar on “Designing Community-led Business Models to Improve Health Outcomes in Humanitarian Settings.” Experts reflected on three case studies from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Syria. Across the board, involving communities throughout the solution development and implementation process emerged as crucial for building resilience and sustainability beyond funding cycles.

In continuation of these conversations about Community-Led Business Models (CLBMs), ThinkPlace’s Oliver Muchiri authored this article to highlight key thematic areas from the webinar, which featured other partners: Innovation Norway, Norwegian Church Aid, IOM, Tinkr, and Field Ready.

Community-led business models empower people experiencing different challenges to take an active role in addressing them through locally led solutions. CLBMs, particularly within Low and Middle-income Countries (LMICs), are not new. In Kenya, for example, communities rallied around common causes post-independence, building schools through collective efforts. The Spirit of Harambee (a Kenyan tradition of community self-help events) is an initial foundational cornerstone of CLBMs. However, over the years, CLBMs have taken a back seat and have been replaced by increased reliance on donor aid. With donor funding declining and policy shifts from major donors like USAID, full reliance on donor aid is no longer sustainable

From the webinar, it was evident that CLBMs continue to attract interest, given their holistic approach to fostering inclusive economies, delivering significant social, economic, and community-wide impact. Half of the participants expressed a keen interest in learning more about best practices for designing, scaling, and implementing CLBMs.

Key Learnings and Emerging Themes
Before diving into key takeaways, the visual below represents the key building blocks of CLBMs, inspired by the three case studies presented during the webinar and other CLBMs designed and implemented by ThinkPlace:

These elements were consistently present across the case studies and are detailed below:

1. Community-Led & Community-Inspired Approach
This is simple yet crucial. Communities driving CLBMs are defined as those with lived experiences of the challenge they are addressing with the business models. Having people with lived experiences as the drivers of CLBMs also ensures that CLBMs indeed solve the actual problems faced by these communities, which means targeted interventions and more impact. In Ethiopia, the CLBMs designed to address incontinence and fecal waste management were led by adults with incontinence and caregivers, especially mothers of children under the age of 3.

2. Infusing Innovation
CLBMs need to infuse innovation and design thinking to distinguish themselves from traditional aid models. To avoid becoming stale and doing things the same way, innovation is the fusion that will keep CLBMs sustainable. Innovation within CLBMs will be strategic in helping CLBMs address the correct problems faced by communities and help CLBMs diversify their offerings within their communities leading to more income and sustainability opportunities. The three case studies presented during the webinar adopted a Human-Centered Design approach in designing the CLBMs, making it a crucial method for designing innovative and impactful business models. Innovation and design thinking are also crucial to ensure that CLBMs recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach is not tenable and that CLBMs, while maintaining their key building blocks, should be designed in a way that is contextualized to the communities they are intended for.

3. Strategic Partnerships
While While CLBMs are intended to be community-led and community-inspired, they cannot operate in isolation. The case studies from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Syria highlighted the need to forge strategic partnerships with the private sector, government stakeholders, and non-governmental organizations. Given the multiple challenges and competing priorities that community members face, collaboration with private sector players and relevant government stakeholders has proved essential. Such strategic partnerships also acknowledge that CLBMs will not be the silver bullet that solves all community challenges. Strategic partnerships are intended to build a strong ecosystem around CLBMs, making them sustainable and able to operate in the long run.

Across Ethiopia, Uganda, and Syria, strategic partnerships with the private sector and NGOs were identified as crucial for gaining the much-needed capital to kick off social enterprises on sanitation products, waste management, and water repair management.
In Ethiopia, partnering with the government was highlighted as crucial to ensure that the government puts in place policies that ensure the long-term sustainability of CLBMs. For CLBMs to thrive and demonstrate long-term viability, sustainability becomes non-negotiable. Governments play a critical role in this by enacting policies that foster the creation and seamless operation of CLBMs, providing a solid foundation for their continued success. For example, one of the keys asks to the Ethiopian government was the reduction of taxes on locally manufactured products that enable the development of sanitary solutions.
Partnerships with the private sector, government, and NGOs across all three case studies were also strategic, given the need for ongoing capacity building for technical and business skills within CLBMs. CLBMs empower community members to take the lead, but for these models to thrive beyond the pilot phase, continuous development of both technical and managerial skills is essential. Regular capacity-building efforts ensure that communities are equipped to sustain and scale the business models over time, and this can be done in collaboration with private sector and government partners.

This is an example of a CLBM ecosystem for Ethiopia. The central functions depict the areas that require strategic partnerships. The production cooperatives were the communal groups that produced and distributed sanitary solutions for adults with incontinence and caregivers of children under 3.

Looking Into the Future: Designing Sustainable CLBMs

While the case studies presented during the webinar were a clear indication of the potential CLBMs that continue to hold, there are critical aspects that need to be considered in designing effective CLBMs. These include:

Financial Sustainability: Designing CLBMs that are financially self-sustaining in a way that helps them address the community’s challenge they are addressing while improving the livelihoods of those involved.
Circular & Regenerative Business Models: Designing circular/regenerative CLBMs that consider the environmental impact of the solutions they are providing. At its core, a regenerative business model aims not only to avoid negative impacts but also to actively improve the well-being of the environment and society. To achieve sustainability, CLBMs need to avoid the potential trap of traditional business models that focus purely on maximizing profits to being ones that prioritize the environmental, economic, and social impact of their operations.

Regenerative business design framework (developed by ThinkPlace Institute for Regenerative Design, 2023). By engaging in collaboration and partnerships, organizations can create more holistic CLBMs emphasizing environmental, economic, and social impact.

Balancing Partnerships & Community Leadership
While CLBMs are designed to allow for strategic partnerships with governments, private sector, and NGOs, they should be designed in a way that ensures that this does not eclipse the role of community leadership within CLBMs. The heartbeat of CLBMs is the communities that have lived experiences of the challenges the models will address, and everything else should center around this.

The Strategic Potential of CLBMs
CLBMs host strategic potential in ensuring that people [especially those in LMICs] have the agency and power to do something about their most pressing challenges. CLBMs will ensure communities can survive external shocks due to diminished donor aid and are not left worse off. Instead, they are empowered to solve and address their actual, most complex challenges and, while at it, make a decent livelihood for themselves.

Below is a pictorial representation of an ongoing implementation of the CLBMs in Ethiopia and the subsequent products produced so far by the production cooperatives: