Recent Publications & Learning

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BAND and How Social Norms Can Make or Break Interventions

  • Partner:
  • Publication Type: Blog
  • Date: March 1, 2025

This blog explores how behavioral analysis and social norms diagnostics can help implementers and practitioners design more effective interventions.

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Why We Need Formative Approaches When Measuring Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Market Systems

  • Partner: Feed The Future
  • Publication Type: Research
  • Date: October 24, 2022

The article argues that traditional methods of measuring women’s empowerment in agricultural programs often fall short because they rely on rigid, predefined indicators. Instead, the authors advocate for formative approaches, which involve continuous, context-sensitive learning and adaptation. These approaches help capture the complex, dynamic nature of empowerment, considering local gender norms and market systems. By integrating qualitative and participatory methods, programs can better understand and respond to women’s real needs, leading to more meaningful and sustainable empowerment outcomes.

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Testing tools for assessing systemic change: Network Analysis

  • Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
  • Publication Type: Report
  • Date: 2016

This paper summarizes MSA’s test of the Network Analysis approach as a tool to measure systemic change. In late 2015, a researcher from MarketShare Associates with the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) activity conducted a network analysis of traders within the vegetable market system in Sierra Leone, to evaluate network analysis as a technique for describing market system dynamics, evaluating systemic change over time, and identifying potential leverage points for intervention by market systems programs.

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Is the ‘MSD hockey stick’ a fable or a fact? Early lessons from the USAID ex-post series

  • Partner: BEAM Exchange, Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships (MSP), DAI
  • Publication Type: Blog
  • Date: November 12, 2024

This blog explores insights from USAID’s Ex-Post Evaluation Series—highlighting the transformative impact that Market Systems Development (MSD) can drive across programs.

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Do the Impacts of MSD Activities Sustain and Scale After Close? An Evidence Synthesis from Recent Ex-Post Evaluations

  • Partner: USAID Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships (MSP), DAI
  • Publication Type: Learning Brief
  • Date: October 4, 2024

This evidence synthesis captures findings from USAID’s ex-post studies in Ghana and Senegal, and bolsters the evidence base for market systems development.

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Improving Women Pastoralists’ Access to Animal Health Services: Recommendations in Ethiopia and Kenya

  • Partner: CoWater SPARC
  • Publication Type: Blog
  • Date: September 9, 2024

This blog provides evidence-based recommendations to improve women pastoralists’ access to animal health, using the experiences of pastoral communities in the drylands of Ethiopia and Kenya.

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Bridging the Gender Gap in Animal Health Services as a Resilience Pathway: Insights from Pastoralist Communities in Ethiopia and Kenya

  • Partner: CoWater SPARC
  • Publication Type: Blog
  • Date: September 9, 2024

This blog explores the dynamics of women’s and men’s access to and use of animal health services (AHS) among pastoralist communities.

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Affecting Equitable Systems Change as a Woman-Owned Business

  • Partner: Small Business Association for International Companies
  • Publication Type: Blog
  • Date: August 27, 2024

This SBAIC blog shares MSA’s perspective as a woman-owned business and highlights strategies for thinking beyond conventional development practices.

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Profit with Purpose: How Women-Inclusive Business Practices Drive SME Success

  • Partner: USAID Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships (MSP), DAI, Williams Davidson Institute
  • Publication Type: Blog
  • Date: July 18, 2024

This blog from Business Fights Poverty examines how inclusive investments advance growth for SMEs and explores insights from the Women-Inclusive Return on Investment case study series.

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Leveraging Opportunities for Systemic Change: Insights from a Market Systems and Performance Baseline of the Rwandan Food System

  • Partner: USAID Feed the Future, Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA)
  • Publication Type: Learning Brief
  • Date: June 5, 2024

The Hinga Wunguke Baseline Study summary brief presents baseline learnings from Rwanda to inform stakeholders and activities striving towards more inclusive and equitable agricultural market systems.

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