Finding the Links in Value Chain Development: A Handbook on Working with Lead Firms

In value chain development, practitioners frequently come across dynamic firms that play a critical role in moving their industry and other value chain participants forward. Practitioners strive to work with these dynamic “lead firms,” but there is little documentation of best practices for working and collaborating with these firms. Action for Enterprise (AFE), a private nonprofit organization with experience implementing private sector development programs worldwide, recently produced a comprehensive and user-friendly handbook with training materials to fill this knowledge gap. This activity, supported by the USAID-funded FIELD-Support LWA, provides development organizations with tools to train and orient their staff.

Strong demand exists for guidance on working and collaborating with lead firms, not only from participants in AFE training programs, but also from development organizations. In light of this demand, AFE designed Tools & Methodologies for Collaborating with Lead Firms: A Practitioner’s Manual with the more advanced practitioner in mind—an individual who is already familiar with value chain facilitation and market development concepts. However, all organizations that are incorporating a value chain approach can benefit from these materials—as collaborating with lead firms to gain sustainable benefits for producers is a part of almost all value chain programs.

To provide practitioners with guidelines, tools, and strategies that they can use in designing and implementing value chain development programs, AFE drew on their own experience as well as knowledge from the Lead Firms Working Group. The manual enables practitioners to adapt and tailor the contents to the different sectors and beneficiaries that they are targeting. By addressing the practical issues of implementation through examples and lessons learned, the manual offers effective methods for identifying and supporting Lead Firm initiatives that deliver needed products, services, and markets to MSMEs in a commercially viable and sustainable manner.