Through the U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS), Feed the Future has embraced market system development (MSD) as an approach to spur sustainable food security. Intellectually, it makes sense: to have lasting change, you need to improve the way institutions — formal or informal — work. Directly supplying goods or services may help in the short term but ultimately creates an incentive structure that harms long term sustainability. It is about finding those leverage points — those people, companies, relationships, entrepreneurs — who, with a little help, can change the landscape of the market system and create a new, hopefully more efficient, market.

Sounds great, right?

The natural question then arises: how do you know? How do you know who and what to target? How do you know MSD is having a ripple effect? How do you know when you need to revisit and revise? How do you know that your effort has led to positive market system changes?

Participants at the Asia Markets Systems Global Learning and Evidence Exchange in Bangkok and at the Africa Market Systems Global Learning and Evidence Exchange in Senegal came with these monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) questions hoping for an answer. However, the simple answer is that there isn’t one answer. MEL strategies for MSD activities must take into account the dynamic, multidimensional and complex nature of the market systems. It boils down to this: as MSD is context specific, so too must MEL be. And so, there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

But there is a process, and there are key themes that merit deeper consideration when designing a MEL framework for MSD programming. Several of these themes are laid out in the paper authored by Elizabeth Dunn, Ben Fowler and me on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning in MSD. Unlike traditional MEL methods, MSD requires frequent learning and adjustment to not only understand the “what” (e.g., What is happening? What changed?) but also the “why” and “how” (e.g., Why is this happening? How did this change?). This learning should rely on a mixed method approach that uses quantitative and qualitative information to better understand how the system is changing based on the intervention and the context. This synthesis paper by the USAID-funded Leveraging Economic Opportunities activity summarizes the results of a set of qualitative monitoring tools that were tested over several years to measure systemic change.

 

 

Under the GFSS, Feed the Future is promoting a multi-pronged approach to monitor market systems change that includes standard indicators, custom indicators and non-indicator monitoring tools that were described during the GLEE metrics presentation (slide 59). GFSS indicators were developed to better reflect the results of market systems development work. This includes a heavier focus on national-level indicators as well as other indicators that we expect will be the result of stronger market systems. The new MEL system will also promote greater custom indicator and indicator disaggregate usage and mixed methods monitoring to measure market system changes.

 

Monitoring market systems also requires frequent feedback loops and needs to be specific to the theory of change and the elements of the sub-system you are trying to change. Using a results chain logic model to monitor your system allows you to capture nonlinear theories of change, quickly account for dynamics and apply adaptive management techniques. Given the nature of market systems development, each of these are vital for accountability, learning and successful implementation.