The need to update the M4P guide

Peter Beez, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), explains why there's a new edition of the M4P Operational Guide.

We have witnessed a significant growth in interest and application of markets system development approaches since 2008, when SDC and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) published the first operational guide to the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) approach.

This year, we have jointly published an updated version.

So, what's new?

- More discourse: the market systems development approach has become more prominent across the development field as a whole, as the relevance of its objectives, principles and guidance has been recognised.

- More organisations and resources: the development community is increasingly reflecting market systems development in its policies, strategies and programming. A range of donor agencies, private foundations and non-government organisations are being guided by its frameworks and are investing in learning and implementation.

- More sectors: beyond its initial emergence from 'economic' sectors (business services, agriculture, finance), there is growing momentum of application in 'social' sectors (health, education, water, infrastructure).

- More evidence: there is a deepening body of knowledge, in the form of implementation experience, case examples, research, and programme measurement, to guide practice.

It is obvious that much has changed. But that is the idea: market system development is work in progress. Human nature is about creativity. We learn by doing, and discovering new ideas and methods can make markets more inclusive.

Market systems approaches have enormous potential to increase the sustainability and impact of development intervention, but they require practitioners and policy-makers to continue to learn from and build on lessons already learned. Ambition and advocacy are required for the development field to 'do better'; in the words of the Guide the field must go beyond simply 'putting out fires' over and over again.

Most knowledge is not written down but in our heads and our practice. This tacit knowledge needs to be constantly harvested, repackaged and distributed so we can all benefit. Many of these updates are captured in the new Operational Guide, which is another milestone in our journey of learning and creativity in market systems development.

The BEAM Exchange will help push for more of this in the future. BEAM represents a new opportunity for collaboration between practitioners and advisors using M4P and other market systems tools. This is made easier as we recognise the important convergence in our objectives: the need to design and implement better programmes and projects that transform systems, and enable markets to work more inclusively. If we can achieve this it will improve more lives of those who need it most. 

Peter Beez is an Economist for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), a Swiss bilateral aid agency. He has worked for the Governance Division, the West Africa Division and has been seconded to the WEF Water Initiative. Since 2009, he has been based in Nicaragua as a regional advisor on topics including private and financial sector development. In 2013 he was appointed head of SDC's focal point employment and income, a network encompassing all SDC projects worldwide dealing with employment and income generation. Peter holds a PhD in economics from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and has worked in SMEs, banks, consultancy and the Swiss Federal Finance Administration.