Module 8. Collecting information with market actors

Overview

Information provided by market actors is of key importance in monitoring the performance of an intervention and understanding what is happening in the wider market system. It is essential for assessing how interventions are working at the pilot stage, and will also be important at the crowding in or expansion stage, where information from the pilot may be necessary to convince other market actors to take up the innovation. 

However, partners’ incentives to share information will be constrained by commercial considerations, and simple practical issues may also create challenges, such as making sure that partner staff understand how to collect and store data in a systematic way. This module therefore reviews some key issues to take account of in considering what kind of information may be obtained from market actors for monitoring purposes, and how to think through what is asked of them. 

For practical examples on the success and failures of collecting information with market actors, see the monitoring stories from Kuza and Zimbisa.