Intervention tactics
Technical capacity building
Technical capacity building is a common intervention tactic for market systems programmes. It can involve a range of approaches from:
- Bringing in a consultant, intern, specialist or mentor to provide targeted, short-term, tailored support to a market actor with a capacity gap;
- developing and running a training session on a particular knowledge gap; and/or,
- on-the-job coaching by programme facilitators.
Usually a programme will use other tactics to reinforce capacity building, but in some instances the problem identified can be simply addressed with technical capacity building alone.
M4P Operational Guide, Chapter 3: Vision
Core principles and frameworks for defining and planning an intervention.
An example of technical capacity building is the Rapid Market Appraisal (RMA), a training that is often done by market facilitators to small business owners on understanding different customer segments.
Clients first! A rapid market appraisal toolkit
Review of rapid market assessments.
Technical capacity building can include non-traditional forms of coaching. For example, TechnoServe and Ecoventures International have built an experiential learning or training programme intended to train agrovets on investing in improved customer service techniques.
Simulating the market to change agribusiness behavior
Introduction to innovative behaviour change tools that have been applied in agribusiness systems in East Africa.
It is important to remember that technical capacity should be considered its own support market. If a capacity gap is an industry wide problem, try to work with an existing service provider to either offer capacity-building services or to develop what market actors need. This means the service can continue after the project is over. See Market Challenge: Weak or Non-Existent Professional Services for more.bea
The MarketMarkers programmes has, as one of its cross-cutting themes, the capacity building of its regional development agency partners, which are in turn expected to be effective local facilitators.