The Market Systems Symposium is a dynamic event, exploring latest practice & research in market systems development globally. Each year, the Symposium gathers market systems development professionals from around the world to think, debate, and push the frontiers of the practice. Read on to see what drives our work, information on past events, and what others have to say.
What matters most
our core principles
Embracing complexity |
Important social and market challenges are complex. The complexity comes from the multiple interests and the dynamic nature of the circumstances at play, and not from a lack of specific expertise. The Symposium focuses on these challenges that require different tools and tactics to gain insights and identify where change might be possible. |
Genuine and authentic dialogue |
At the heart of the Symposium is the belief that complex social and market challenges require honest, open, and frank conversations. The Symposium uses a range of creative methods and processes to move beyond superficial platitudes, and into deeper discussions about the various forces and interests affecting systems. |
Learning driven by peer exchanges |
The Symposium intentionally engages methods to increase the flow of information via peer-to-peer exchanges that can explore the many perspectives of complex challenges. Diversity is essential to deeper learning. |
Exploring Frontiers |
The Symposium is committed to ongoing learning that has to lean into difficult frontier discussions/issues. |
Integrating thinking and doing |
Often called praxis, the Symposium intentionally blurs the boundaries between research and implementation, focusing more on the process of quick learning through interactive thinking and doing processes. |
Quality guided by clarity of evidence and effective inquiry |
Complexity requires engaging many perspectives, but effective learning also requires quality controls be put in place to ensure information is grounded in valid and robust evidence. Applying a level of rigor via participatory validation processes is essential to building a foundation of learning that can evolve and improve over time. |
Topical and responsive |
Development is a dynamic process and there will be emergent challenges. The Symposium is committed to ongoing engagement with practitioners and experts to prioritize their threats, opportunities, and questions. |
Commitment to systems thinking and perspectives |
Practitioners working on complex challenges need to clarify/understand how real change can happen and systems lenses have proven effective at illuminating pathways in unique local contexts. |
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Don't take our worD for it...
Reflections from the market systems symposium
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The formal international development community will soon have been active for 60 years. Throughout that period - and even today - practitioners have asked how the positive effects of their projects can be continued after their Official Development Assistance funding runs out. This has been nothing less than the key question facing our industry for six decades, and I personally have heard it asked repeatedly since 1978.
The advent of the Market Systems approach to international development offers a viable answer to that question. Addressing issues of economic prosperity and social inclusion through market participants is starting to be recognized as the best way to ensure the durability of our solutions. Attempting to address those problems by working around markets through direct interventions has simply not worked. The international development community is accepting the dramatic advantages offered by working through markets. The Market Systems Symposium is the key event on the international development calendar where these ideas can be exchanged robustly, and ACDI/VOCA, as a leading Market Systems practitioner, will continue to support the MSS as it performs that important role.
The advent of the Market Systems approach to international development offers a viable answer to that question. Addressing issues of economic prosperity and social inclusion through market participants is starting to be recognized as the best way to ensure the durability of our solutions. Attempting to address those problems by working around markets through direct interventions has simply not worked. The international development community is accepting the dramatic advantages offered by working through markets. The Market Systems Symposium is the key event on the international development calendar where these ideas can be exchanged robustly, and ACDI/VOCA, as a leading Market Systems practitioner, will continue to support the MSS as it performs that important role.
Charles J. Hall
President & CEO / ACDI/VOCA
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The Market Systems Symposium is an important touch point for the community to advance our impact.
The ability to engage, over multiple days, with a variety of people who are learning different things from their market facilitation practice enabled a much higher level of exchange. I came away energized with new thoughts and ideas.
The ability to engage, over multiple days, with a variety of people who are learning different things from their market facilitation practice enabled a much higher level of exchange. I came away energized with new thoughts and ideas.
Kristin O'Planick
Market Systems Specialist / USAID Bureau for Food Security
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"For me, it is not about numbers…It is more about our value-adding involvement which focuses more on cultivating processes which give birth to organic growth in the market place.” This symposium lays down the gauntlet for that. It provides an unflattering mirror for us to take a good look at ourselves and offers tools for our own betterment. It inspires.
Tonderai Manoto
Chief Technical Advisor / ILO
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I really enjoyed the clicker methodologies used, as they gave a voice to the more introverted people, which I found helpful. I appreciated the cross-sectoral elements, which brought together a lot of different learning we wouldn't get otherwise. I also enjoyed the space to have more candid conversations with people, so it was also a great opportunity for learning and networking.
Rana El Hattab
Commercialization and Scaling Advisor / USAID Bureau for Food Security
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It was an eye opening experience to see that MSD practitioners around the world face the same type of challenges regarding organizational transformation from direct delivery to systems thinking. Perhaps, this kind of Symposium can bring the donors and the implementing agencies together to design a better world.”
Sadruzzaman “Tamam” Noor
Market Development Specialist / CARE Bangladesh
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