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Share your market systems story and learning with the community. We’re looking for new insights and opinions from practitioners around the world.

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Does scale matter?

How will all the nine billion people in the world of 2030 obtain safe, good food?

Julian Peach
April 23, 2020
Impossible choices – questioning assumptions behind lock-down in low income and fragile contexts

COVID-19 response – checking our assumptions for fragile and low capacity countries.

Julia Lawson McDowall
April 16, 2020
Market systems approach – all about business, really?

If we are to be useful allies to poor people then it is important we understand the difference between businesses and market systems.

Julian Peach
April 14, 2020
Should we create decent work or make work more decent? Demystifying what decent work means for Market System Development projects

Focusing on job creation alone is not enough. Low quality jobs are precisely what keeps people locked into cycles of poverty.

Matt Ripley
April 7, 2020
COVID-19 lockdowns threaten Africa’s vital informal urban food trade

Informal food markets are vital to feeding African cities, venues the poor rely on to buy and sell fresh food. Danielle Resnick argues that as governments impose COVID-19 restrictions, informal food traders should be helped rather than persecuted.

Danielle Resnick
April 6, 2020
Measuring impact, managing failure

Clara Garcia Parra of Helvetas interviews Susanne Thiard-Laforet of the Austrian Development Agency to discuss 'impact' from the donor perspective and to share thoughts on learning from failure.

Clara García Parra
March 24, 2020
MSD and job creation: can we measure what counts?

The need to ‘prove results’ in job creation easily creates incentives for unsustainable quick fixes that do not shift the conditions holding problems in place.

Mike Albu
March 3, 2020
The schism in systemic change measurement

There are two schools of thought in the MSD community as to how to go about assessing systemic change. These are rooted in two different ways of seeing systems.

Jake Lomax
March 3, 2020
Working with the private sector for systemic change: why build a partnership facility in the first place?

A look at the partnership principles that informed how USAID/Mozambique’s Feed the Future Agricultural Innovations activity designed its partnership facility.

Dan Langfitt
Feb. 17, 2020
Using data to promote women’s empowerment in MSD programmes: the experience of AWEF

Sharing some of the lessons learnt on effectively collecting and using data as part of the Arab Women Enterprise Fund.

Julia Hakspiel
Feb. 11, 2020
Using Political Economy Analysis to improve the enabling environment for agricultural market systems

How thinking and working politically (TWP) through the use of applied political economy analysis (PEA) can help market systems practitioners.

Marc Cassidy
Feb. 10, 2020
Breaking down market barriers to benefit communities and biodiversity

PMSD, which stands for Participatory Market System Development, is not as complicated as it may sound!

Kiran Mohanan
Feb. 10, 2020
The Art of the Pivot…in the context of results-based management

Responding to moral dilemmas arising from interventions in MSD programmes

Ben Taylor
Jan. 13, 2020
Simple models vs complex realities: do our good intentions lead others into poverty traps?

The tendency to promote simple models fails to recognise more complex realities and causalities.

Matthias Herr
Dec. 10, 2019
GESI: four ways to successfully mainstream it across your programme

There are four key elements that can help mainstream Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) across your programme.

Terry Roopnaraine
Nov. 25, 2019