iDE story on Agrilinks third most popular for 2021

Agrilinks -- a US government publication dedicated to ending global hunger -- has named a story about iDE's Market System Resilience Index (MSRI) as its third most read in 2021. 

The landmark index enables us to measure the strength of relationships among participants within a market system, helping us adapt our approach and direct efforts to building relationships where necessary. We can now hold ourselves and our partners accountable to implementing better development work while accelerating our pace towards ending poverty.

The Agrilinks story says . . . 

"The international development sector is moving toward placing more emphasis on resilience and also measuring the effectiveness of interventions — particularly their sustainability and resilience to climate shocks and stresses to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

iDE has developed a tool to measure the resilience of market systems. iDE’s Market Systems Resilience Index (MSRI) is at the forefront of the academic and thought leadership around resilience measurement and how to operationalize it into an actionable and usable tool for wide use. MSRI has been successfully piloted in Nepal, Bangladesh and Mozambique, and we will be rolling out the tool in additional locations to better understand the context that we work in, how effective our interventions are and how we can improve our future work. Employing MSRI will also allow us to have greater insights across our country offices and encourage better learning."

How we calculate resilience

A market’s resilience is measured by examining 11 equally weighted determinants, broken into five principles. The determinants are derived from academic literature. iDE numerators conduct a survey of households and relevant market actors, asking about 100 questions, which probe the strength of the determinants within a geographically defined market. Answers are scored on a one through five rubric, depending on a determinant’s detected strength, with five being the highest. Several hundred respondents are asked about a range of topics including basic personal details, what crops and livestock they farm, their access to value chains and services, and what shocks and stressors they’ve experienced. Answers are recorded on smartphones and automatically tabulated. The sum of the answers provides a score for each determinant, as well as an averaged overall score.