ReliefWeb

Overview

Through the Improving the Uptake of Humanitarian Market Analysis project, the IRC aimed to help facilitate the systematic use of market information for humanitarian programming across sectors. It did this by attempting to address some of the main barriers to the uptake of market information, namely, the perception and practice of market assessments as time- and resource-intensive undertakings; a lack of in-country ownership and leadership of market assessments; inadequate attention to markets in pre-crisis contexts and the limited knowledge and capacity in market analysis among field level practitioners and beyond the food security and livelihoods sector. The core of this initiative consisted of a series of activities undertaken in collaboration with CRS and Mercy Corps to identify, pilot and evaluate practices that can increase the systematic use of market analysis and the uptake of resulting data.

In early 2017, a review was conducted to identify examples of where humanitarian market analysis had influenced programming and to distill general factors and specific practices that support the uptake of market information from these examples. Then, several of these practices were selected for piloting in three countries: Uganda (hosted by Mercy Corps), Niger (hosted by IRC) and Nigeria (hosted by CRS). Each pilot focused on one primary practice, while the pilots in Niger and Uganda incorporated two secondary practices as well.

The primary practices piloted were (1) incorporating non-price indicators into price monitoring efforts; and (2) fostering collaboration between humanitarian and development actors to gather and interpret market information. They were piloted in 2017 for a period of 3-6 months in each country. Each pilot was launched with an in-person visit from a member of an IRC-managed consultant team, who introduced the practice(s) to be piloted and worked with the country staff to develop a detailed implementation plan and supporting tools. The consultants continued to support the country teams remotely throughout the remainder of the pilots, as the practices were implemented. An evaluation visit was conducted to each pilot location in late 2017 to assess the extent to which the practices had contributed to the uptake of market information in programmatic decision making, as well as the efficiency of the practices and blockers and enablers of their uptake.

The market-related information gathered had not overtly influenced any of the pilot country’s programming by the time the evaluation took place, for two main reasons: the practices had been implemented more slowly than originally envisioned, and specific opportunities for utilizing the information in new program proposals did not present themselves within the pilot timeframes. Despite this, both primary practices piloted showed significant promise to support the use of market information in programming, largely through their potential to foster an environment that would enable this to happen.

This brief provides a description of the two primary practices and how each was piloted, along with key learning and recommendations for replicating the practices elsewhere. It then presents general reflections on the learning across all three pilots. This brief is intended for humanitarian stakeholders interested in making sure that market information is considered in programming and, more broadly, to anyone interested in how to promote responsiveness to any kind of contextual information among humanitarian actors at the field level.