Ailsa Buckley

Ailsa is a Private Sector Development Expert who has been designing and implementing enterprise projects for over 28 years in East Africa. Ailsa employs a range of skills in sub sector and cross sector approaches to increasing private sector incomes through systemic market development approaches. She has focused specifically on the commercialisation of support services and stimulating specific markets to be competitive via facilitation of the private sector. She also has extensive experience in capacity development for market systems development. She is the Business and Markets Specialist for Swisscontact in East, Central and Southern Africa and focal point for Inclusive Systems Development globally.

Contributions

Blogs

• Who decides where employment programmes anchor and how? [2026]
• Making climate action good business [2025]
• Because the best 'goodbye' sounds a lot like 'over to you' [2025]
• Climate action through market systems: why businesses need a systems development approach [2025]
• Creating space for leaders to emerge [2024]
• Seeking the holy grail: projects impact positively on climate issues, but is the change systemic? [2024]
• Inclusive systems development through the looking glass [2019]

Resources

• Fixing leaky buckets: how CASA tailored agri-SME investment support [2026]
• Insights from CASA's country teams on the holy grail: the business case [2026]
• Wrapping up with purpose: lessons on closing projects and partnerships... responsibly [2025]
• Decisive structures: procurement format options for MSD programmes and their different implications [2020]
• Creating jobs in urban waste management [2018]