Pushing the Poverty Frontiers of Inclusive Value Chain Development Briefing Paper

The value chain approach aims to achieve economic growth with poverty reduction, but there tends to be a poverty ‘frontier’ beyond which value chain development programs struggle to engage. This briefing paper presents some emerging guidance around how value chain development can explicitly ‘pull’ the very poor into markets in gainful ways. It highlights program design strategies, examples of adapting value chain development principles, the importance of appropriately sequencing program interventions, as well as some key challenges when working with the very poor.