Making Markets Work for Poor -- Comparing M4P and SLA frameworks: Complementarities, divergences and synergies

by Mike Albu The Springfield Centre, United Kingdom (on behalf of the Fauno consortium), June 2008, for the Employment and Income Division of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

This question at the heart of this paper is: how should development agencies - and governments - respond to the situation of poor households whose livelihoods are intertwined through markets with socially, politically or geographically remote actors and processes? What ways of thinking, what approaches, will assist their staff to make the best decisions about how to intervene?

Poverty reduction is the ultimate objective of both Market Development and Sustainable Livelihoods approaches. However, the means by which to achieve this goal often differ. Realising the need to find common grounds of understanding between the two approaches, the Employment and Income (E+I) Division of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has jointly organised a seminar with the Social Development (SoDev) Division. The seminar was the culmination of a series of activities conducted by the E+I division under the FAUNO consortium.

Available for download at http://www.springfieldcentre.com/publications/sp0803.pdf