Strengthening Market Systems Resilience

The next three years are expected to be “characterized by either consistent volatility and multiple surprises or fractured trajectories that will separate relative winners and losers,” according to most respondents of a recent World Economic Forum survey. The development industry is seeing this volatility play out through rising fertilizer, fuel, and food prices and worsening impacts of climate change. According to the World Food Programme, the number of people facing or at risk of acute food insecurity increased from 135 million in 53 countries pre-pandemic to 345 million in 82 countries today. This September, Marketlinks explores how conflict, climate change, and global supply chain disruptions have brought market systems resilience (MSR) to the forefront of development.

For USAID, MSR has been elevated to a core objective of the Global Food Security Strategy. We are now seeing an increasing number of solicitations and projects with explicit goals for strengthening MSR. In response, USAID and its partners have established foundational analytical and measurement frameworks and learning and training resources on MSR and a recent state of the field map, highlighting 35 projects across 26 countries applying MSR through implementation and research. 

While the development challenges we face our more complex than ever, it is exciting to see progress and expanding expertise in MSR. ACDI/VOCA is proud to have contributed to this progress from publishing one of the first papers on MSR determinants to participating in USAID’s MSR Community of Practice and developing and field-testing some of the first analytical and measurement tools. Because of this, ACDI/VOCA is pleased to partner with Marketlinks this month to share our emerging learning and that of our partners in core MSR themes, such as assessing and measuring MSR, pivoting with the private sector to respond to shocks and stresses, and current strategies to respond to the food crisis. 

Throughout the month, Marketlinks will share blog posts from the broader community of projects and practitioners taking a resilience lens to their market systems work. We invite you to join the discussion by writing a guest blog post or sharing on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Please email info@marketlinks.org to submit MSR information that you would like to share. We also encourage you to attend the MSR webinar, "Getting Practical About Market Systems Resilience: Learning from Three Case Studies," on September 28 at 9:00am EDT.