Reimagining Youth Empowerment in Africa: SINA’s Journey Toward Internal Entrepreneurship

This blog post is part of 80+ case studies of progressive organizations we created for the ZeroDX awards 2025. These organizations embody the principles of RenDanHeYi in their work structures:

• Zero Distance to customer: Decision what to build is based on insights from the marketplace

• Autonomy: Small teams with full decision-making autonomy enable speed in execution

• Shared Rewards: Everyone in the micro-enterprise participates in its financial success.

Founded in Uganda in 2014 by Etienne Salborn, SINA began as a grassroots response to systemic challenges ineducation and youth unemployment. Etienne, who had worked for years in nonprofit leadership and purpose discovery programs, co-developed SINA’s participatory learning model with young Ugandans and refugee community members. Since then, the network has grown to 20 communities across eight countries, with 1,639 jobs created and over 100 formal and 360 informal ventures launched.

A pivotal moment came in 2024 when SINA was honored with a Zero Distance Excellence Award in the category of Benchmark Innovators and invited to visit Haier in Qingdao, China. Until that point, SINA had not been familiar with Haier or its RenDanHeYi (RDHY) philosophy. The visit offered much more than recognition. It introduced the team to a system of decentralized management and user-focused innovation that aligned with many of SINA’s existing practices.For Etienne, it opened a new phase of inquiry. “The more you understand, the more questions that come up,” he reflected. He described RDHY not as a blueprint but as a set of principles that could be locally adapted. “It works well for us,” he said of its flexibility.

Following the visit, Etienne connected with Sylvia Guan, Senior Researcher at the Haier Model Institute, to understand how RDHY principles might be relevant to SINA’s context. The conversations prompted strategic reflection. Could SINA build not just external ventures but a model for internal entrepreneurship that allowed contributors to co-createvalue while remaining within the organization?

At the time, most SINA-born ventures operated independently. “We have trained over 100 entrepreneurs,” Etiennenoted. “But they are not legally connected back to SINA, which is great, it's impact. But it also means we are still heavily dependent on funding, grants, donations”. He posed difficult questions: What would a financially self-sustaining SINA look like? Could it support internal ventures that aligned with its mission and culture?

The first practical step came through a collaboration with Hansgrohe, a German company developing a portable shower for underserved markets. Hansgrohe had the technology but lacked context-specific insights about rural and informal communities in East Africa. SINA formed a team of members from different communities to lead a participatorydesign process. “We co-created in a design thinking sprint,” Etienne explained. “How can we go out using existing SINA communities in all the places we have? So if they do the interviews, they can actually get the real data much better than any external person coming in”.

The research team conducted dozens of user interviews in local languages, testing assumptions around hygiene practices, infrastructure constraints, and product relevance. Based on their findings, they helped Hansgrohe adapt the shower design and identify its most viable use cases. In return, Hansgrohe committed to sending 100 prototypes for pilot deployment in Uganda. That deployment is currently in progress, with the project still developing through 2025 as the team explores user feedback and next steps.

For Etienne, the collaboration marked a turning point. It was the first time he intentionally brought together contributors from multiple SINA communities to coordinate a collaborative venture that involved user research, design input, andthe early design of a revenue model. The group operated across community boundaries, made key decisions together, and shaped the process based on insights from the ground. While still in its early stages, the initiative has become a live experiment in applying RDHY principles. “It is the first time that I have played a principle of RDHY coming together,” Etienne said.

Two additional internal venture concepts are also emerging. One is an agreement in development with a major Ugandan university to deliver SINA’s purpose discovery program to academic faculty. The other is a coaching initiative.“We have a great pool of coaches,” Etienne said. “Some of them have even been internationally trained, internationally certified”. While the potential is strong, the structure is still being explored. “The challenge is, many of those people who are good at coaching are not good at marketing and sales,” Etienne added. “So they would have to team up with others who have those skills. But there has not been any structure internally to incentivise financially how this should work”.

SINA has historically avoided providing financial incentives for specific roles, aiming to keep motivation rooted inshared purpose rather than income. “We have been very careful in the past not to incentivise financially any specific roles out of the fear that people would run to those,” Etienne explained. However, this cautious approach has sometimes made it difficult to launch new services. RDHY helped SINA rethink how financial structures could enable innovation without undermining community values. The idea of internal microenterprises offers a way for contributors to form teams, test ideas, and remain active in the ecosystem.

This new model adds an additional path to SINA’s existing learning journey. Traditionally, participants move through three stages: personal development, internal contribution, and external enterprise creation. The new internal entrepreneurship model introduces a second option at the final stage. Instead of building a venture outside thenetwork, participants can now co-create enterprises from within. “That second pathway is now available,” said Etienne. “It wasn’t there before”.

According to the 2024 Impact Report, SINA-supported ventures raised more than 450,000 US dollars in external capital during that year. Impact enterprises like Nunu Fund, which helped 1,200 students avoid dropping out of school,and Justev Building Systems, which contributed to carbon reduction through sustainable construction, are among those demonstrating measurable success. While these numbers reflect SINA’s broader ecosystem, they also show the capacity for decentralized initiatives to deliver both social and economic value. These ventures embody the RDHY principle of zero distance to users, not just providing solutions to communities, but designing them from within.

SINA’s engagement with RDHY is not a copy of the Haier model. It is a reinterpretation through the lens of refugee education, grassroots enterprise, and regenerative community building.

Being nominated for the Zero Distance Awards in 2024 gave SINA both visibility and the opportunity to access a global network of peer organisations. The visit to Haier and subsequent conversations allowed Etienne and his team to discover a language and structure for questions they had already grappled with. Rather than receiving a formula, they found a flexible philosophy they could adapt. RDHY has since become a reference point for experimentation in 2025. It has helped SINA frame safe-to-try ventures, encourage local ownership, and rethink the boundaries between purpose, participation, and enterprise. “We’re still learning,” Etienne said. “But RDHY showed us how we could grow from where we already are”.