Scale of Outreach in Market Systems Development: Building the Evidence Base

As a path toward achieving scale and sustainability in inclusive market systems development, many donors and implementers have adopted a facilitation approach that catalyzes changes in both the structure and dynamics of market systems. A common element across these programs is that implementers do not have primary contact with target beneficiaries.

This study looks at the evidence on outreach from eleven market system facilitation projects. These projects were designed to promote inclusive growth in agricultural value chains. While a variety of indicators were used to measure specific types of outreach to smallholder farmers, more comprehensive indicators for measuring total outreach were less common. Moreover, all of the official indicators focus on measuring outreach to direct beneficiaries, while beneficiaries reached indirectly are missing from the evidence base.