To expand the evidence base for a market systems development (MSD) approach, USAID is supporting a global series of ex post evaluations to ask:  What happens to the sustainability and scalability of (1) systems changes and (2) the resulting outcomes, years after a program that adopted elements of the MSD approach ends?

Download the full report and a summary brief (in English and en Francais) below from the first study in the series, conducted three and a half years after the closure of USAID’s Feed the Future Senegal Naatal Mbay Activity. Using USAID’s Disrupting System Dynamics (DSD) framework as an analytical tool for understanding systems change, the research examined the scale and sustainability of changes resulting from Naatal Mbay’s introduction of an integrated finance model in the domestic rice sector in Senegal. The findings show a relatively positive evolution since project closure, with three of the four intended systemic changes enduring over time.  The study also offers observations on implications for programming in both Senegal and for global practitioners.

The four changes evaluated are:

• Systemic Change #1: Market actors accept signed contracts and secured crop as collateral on which to provide increased amounts of credit at reduced risk.
• Systemic Change #2: Contracting between producers and processors continues to be a widespread practice in the rice sector.
• Systemic Change #3: Senegalese rice effectively competes in higher-value local markets.
• Systemic Change #4: The enhancement and digitalization of information management systems among unions of farmer cooperatives was not sustained.

Additional ex post evaluations are being conducted between 2023-2026 on USAID-funded MSD interventions around the world and will be posted on www.agrilinks.org/msp as they become available, with findings from the next study (in Ghana) expected to be published by the end of 2023.