The Lesedi and Letsatsi Solar Park Trusts are two of South Africa’s longest-standing community development trusts established through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP). DGMT’s Place-Based Synergies team is a long-term development partner to these trusts. We are collaborating with them to pioneer a bold new model of community development and, indeed, a new role for community development trusts themselves. One that moves beyond traditional trust administration and programme funding and instead positions these trusts as platforms for community-driven systems change.
To address the challenges of climate change and the transition away from emission-intensive energy sources like coal, the South African government has embraced the concept of a just transition. This approach recognises that moving away from coal will have negative consequences for workers and communities and seeks to minimise these impacts while ensuring that the benefits of a zero-carbon economy are distributed equitably.
South Africa’s energy transition is also happening in the context of deep and enduring inequality. Through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP), community trusts like Lesedi and Letsatsi were created to ensure that the benefits of this transition reach the communities most affected—not just through job creation, but through meaningful, long-term human development.
It is within this policy context that the Lesedi and Letsatsi projects emerged. These community trusts hold shares in renewable energy power companies and were established to ensure that the gains of the transition are shared with those directly impacted. They align with government’s just transition goals while providing a unique opportunity to address systemic inequality at a local level.
But here’s the challenge:
Development funding alone does not change life trajectories. Most communities remain stuck in a cycle of underperforming services, siloed programmes and fragmented leadership. Interventions happen to communities, not with them. Promising projects are launched but often fail to shift the system around them. If we want different outcomes, we need a fundamentally different approach—one that addresses not just the symptoms, but the system itself.
Our approach is built on partnership. We work alongside communities to strengthen their ability to shape their own futures—building the confidence, skills, and structures that enable local actors to lead change. We foster collaboration between community leaders, organisations, and service providers, ensuring that efforts are connected rather than fragmented. Most importantly, we see these shifts in agency and relationships not as ends in themselves, but as the foundation for lasting human development outcomes—healthier children, thriving schools, meaningful livelihoods, and resilient communities. Together, we can create systems that work for people, not against them.
The majority of South Africans are stuck in an inequality trap with wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. Most are stuck in intergenerational loops of exclusion with few chances to escape. Breaking this cycle requires a fundamental change in life trajectories, starting in the womb.
Think of a Möbius strip – just one twist in the circle allows you to trace a completely different pattern. Instead of being stuck on the inside of a loop, you emerge on the outside. In the same way, escaping the inequality trap requires a fundamental twist to set South Africa on a new path.
Traditionally, community trusts focus on funding individual projects and programmes. But we’re asking a bigger question: What kind of “infrastructure” does a community need to drive and sustain its own transformation?
That’s the shift we’re making. Instead of seeing Lesedi and Letsatsi Trusts as funders, we’re reimagining them as anchors for long-term change; platforms that help bring people, services, and organisations together to work as a team. These trusts do not just fund good programmes. They help build the conditions that make systemic change possible. Trust between people and institutions, alignment around a shared vision for change, local leadership that drives action, and stronger systems that deliver results. By combining smart investments with deep local engagement, these trusts are helping to create ecosystems where communities can lead their own development journeys – and succeed.
Our approach is built on five key shifts:
From fragmented programmes to systems change – We are not just investing in good projects; we are connecting them within a coherent strategy to shift the conditions that hold poverty and exclusion in place. Each investment becomes a building block in a larger blueprint for community-wide change: transforming how opportunities flow, how institutions serve, and how communities thrive.
From administration to strategic leadership – We do not just respond to needs. We work with communities to build a shared vision for what is possible for children, young people, and families, and then help chart a path to get there, together.
From compliance data to shared accountability – We do not just report back to communities because it is our duty; we go further. We are building ways for communities and the trust to take responsibility for progress together. Real change cannot be delivered by the trust alone. It requires shared commitment, joint learning, and collective action where everyone plays a role and is accountable for the results we want to see.
From corporate marketing to community narrative – Our communications are not about promoting the trust as the hero of the story. They are about holding up a mirror to the community reflecting back the hopes, strengths, and possibilities that already exist. It is about showing that the change people long for is already within reach because they are the ones they have been waiting for. Our role is simply to help that story come to life.
From scaling wide to scaling deep – We are not chasing big numbers or quick wins. Instead, we stay long enough to tackle the root causes of poverty and exclusion with patience, consistent presence, and true partnership. It is not just about how many people we reach. It is about how deeply lives are transformed by changing the systems around them, for good.
We are not just investing in programmes. We are reimagining Lesedi and Letsatsi as platforms for systemic change—ecosystem orchestrators that strengthen local capacity and align efforts toward long-term impact.
Each trust plays five core roles in its community:
Backbone Facilitation – We convene and coordinate stakeholders around shared priorities, facilitating structured collaboration that aligns efforts and builds trust.
Investment Stewardship – We ensure that funding is directed toward high-impact, context-appropriate interventions that complement and strengthen the local ecosystem.
Accountability Infrastructure – We establish shared measurement systems that enable communities and partners to track progress, learn, and adapt together.
Community Narrative Building – We foster collective ownership by amplifying community voices, celebrating progress, and shifting the story from one of poverty and exclusion to one of agency and possibility.
Community Capacitation – We invest in strengthening local institutions and leaders to ensure that communities can sustain and scale change from within.
All of this is in service to three fundamental shifts:
Because children don’t grow up in programmes—they grow up in families, nested in communities. And to truly change life trajectories, we must transform the systems that surround them.
Trying to change life trajectories is ambitious and profound. It requires us to radically influence the lives of individuals and to be part of changing the circumstances in which they live.
Visit the Lesedi Solar Park Trust website.
View the 2024 Lesedi Annual Report.
Visit the Letsatsi Solar Park Trust website.
View the 2024 Letsatsi Annual Report.
