Market Systems Resilience Learning Resources Series

This page includes a series of resources aimed at capturing practical guidance and applied experience in market systems resilience (MSR), developed through the Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships Activity. 

Resources in this series include:

• Demystifying MSR: An Introductory Brief: this brief offers a simplified explanation of MSR and its key drivers, as well as examples of interventions that can strengthen MSR and entry points for practitioners looking to apply an MSR lens. It discusses how an MSR lens emphasizes stressors (as well as shocks), seeks insights from enterprises and market institutions (not just households), applies a unique analytical framework, and designs interventions to influence the system. Now available in Français and Español. 
• Using an MSR Lens to Support Household Resilience: This brief focuses on how practitioners can use an MSR lens to identify key linkages that households need before, during, and after a shock or stress, strengthening resilience and household-level outcomes. Three key linkages are discussed: protection and recovery, generating cash, and improving a household's longer-term risk management capacity.
• Cartoon-Based Learning Tools (Multiple Languages): available in English, French, and Spanish—in PDF, PowerPoint, and digital flipbook format—are teaching tools that offer a visually appealing, hands-on primer on MSR and analyzing markets through an MSR lens. The cartoons also include instructions on how they can be used in group and individual settings and some prompts to get the conversation going afterward as teams internalize the concepts for their specific context.
  • MSR: An Introduction introduces two characters, an implementer of a local donor development project and her new colleague, and follows them as they define markets systems and MSR broadly, discuss how an MSR lens emphasizes stressors (as well as shocks), and expand upon that role that businesses must play in improving market systems resilience. See the PowerPoint and digital flipbook formats as well. Also, check out the French and Spanish versions.
  • MSR: Analyzing Markets rejoins our protagonists as they discuss how to analyze a market using an MSR lens. Echoing the Demystifying MSR brief, the comic strip illustrates the structural and behavioral domains of a market system and explains how to look for patterns across all factors. See the PowerPoint and digital flipbook formats as well. Also, check out the French and Spanish versions.
  • Household Resilience: Strengthened by Market Systems: The third cartoon in the series, this comic strip illustrates several ways a more resilient market system can help households (who buy from, sell to, and work in market systems) better cope with shocks and stresses. Check out the English, French and Spanish versions.
• Case Study: How an MSR Lens Shaped Intervention Design and Adaptation in Northern Kenya: this case study illustrates how insights from a rapid MSR assessment early in implementation, conducted in two pivotal market towns, allowed a program to better understand what was driving the quality of relationships between market actors and the pace of change. This case explores how the program used these insights to adapt and pivot programming, tailored to the unique dynamics within each geographic area that shaped market behaviors and outcomes. Lastly, this case demonstrates that integrating an MSR lens does not have to be an assessment-heavy task and can happen at any stage of implementation.
• MSR State of the Field Map: a visual snapshot of where MSR is being applied globally across 35 projects in 26 countries, as of January 2022.

MSP is advancing learning and good practice in market systems development and private sector engagement within USAID, USAID partners, and market actors. For more information, access to technical resources, and opportunities to engage, visit www.agrilinks.org/msp.