When developing a future vision for a more effective market system, it is important to keep three concepts front of mind: effectiveness, scale and, most importantly, sustainability.
- Effectiveness can be defined as a programme’s ability to create meaningful behaviour change across a market system by working with a limited number of partners. An informed programme can leverage key relationships to achieve greater impact with the same number of project resources as its direct delivery counterpart.
- Scale, when understood within a market systems approach, implies that entire markets will behave differently when a tipping point is achieved from multiple interventions, rather than from a single project working with a few market actors. Scale reflects a desire to create deep social change, not just the replication of business models.
- Sustainability is the capability of a market system to continue to adapt and provide the means for a target population to derive social and economic benefits beyond the period of intervention. This is different from the sustainability of any one model or way of working. This concept shares attributes with thinking on resilience as opposed to continuation.
Market systems resilience explores this concept further, arguing that sustainability should be about adaptive capacity, or the ability of a system to adapt and respond to new threats as they emerge.
Designing a vision with sustainability in mind
Taking sustainability seriously imposes discipline on a programme's strategy and interventions. Without a clear exit strategy, there's a risk that the programme’s actions will distort systems rather than develop them. Considering sustainability from the start requires an exit strategy at the outset, and holding yourself to it. Ask yourself:
- Would market players continue with their new role without programme support?
- Will players be motivated and able to change how they behave with (modest) programme inputs?
- Can the new configuration of functions and players result in sustainable system change within the lifespan of the programme?
Sustainable change of market actors behaviour at scale explores one programme example of how market actors behaviour was changed to lead to impact at scale.
The facilitation role
Designing with sustainability in mind means shifting from a doing mindset to one where the role of your programme is to facilitate change. Where a conventional aid programme might ask 'how can we solve the problems this target group is facing?', market systems thinking emphasises the need to ask:
- Why is this market system not already working in an inclusive manner?
- What needs to change to make the system more functional and inclusive?
Ultimately, the success of MSD programmes hinges on their ability to achieve demonstrable and lasting improvements in market functioning. This requires a clear understanding of the complexities of market systems and a commitment to building local ownership and capacity for long-term sustainability. There is more on the principles and tactics of facilitation in common intervention tactics.
Sustainability in a failed state looks at how MSD programmes can aim to promote sustainability within even the most challenging operating environments.