Applying systemic approaches to developing markets

Caritas Switzerland’s Expertise

• Poor and vulnerable people are often excluded from market economies – although the access to markets is essential to get out of poverty.

• The Market System Development (MSD) approach remains very valid in international cooperation because system change is the essence of largescale and sustainable development.

• Caritas Switzerland experiences positive impact resulting from the use of the MSD approach, and therefore strives to increasingly adapt this approach to fragile contexts.

• In times of crisis (e. g. global pandemic or climate change), wellfunctioning agricultural market systems gain even higher importance to combat food insecurity and poverty.

The understanding of Caritas Switzerland

A market is any place where two or more parties meet to engage in an economic transaction. At the heart of a market system lies the exchange of goods or services, such as smallholder farmers selling crops, households buying domestic commodities, or labourers earning wages. Although poor people are the focus of the approach, understanding systemic approaches is done from a market perspective – e. g. looking at all the different actors within a system, and the interventions themselves (the project activities) often target other actors in the system. The MSD approach seeks to identify and address the root causes of system failure instead of just trying to fight the symptoms. Moreover, in an MSD project, measures are not only implemented at the producers’ level, as the inclusion of all systems’ actors is required. As a rule, the (MSD) overall objective is a system that is scalable and ultimately works and functions without involvement of the implementing agencies.