When a different approach to economic development began to emerge – one that put sustainability at the centre of design and sought to instigate systemic change instead of delivering impact directly – the biggest challenge was convincing the field even to consider new ways of working. Springfield made it a mission to proliferate the approach, now known as market systems development or MSD.
Nearly three decades on from those early arguments for proliferation – and careers spent proliferating ever since – it was more than a little surprising to find ourselves in a debate at this year’s DCED Seminar in Nairobi arguing that proliferation of the MSD approach has gone too far and that it’s time to consolidate and get back to basics. How did we get here?
Why MSD emerged
MSD emerged because practitioners and funders asked uncomfortable questions about why so much development effort failed to stick.
Programmes too often produced temporary gains but little lasting change. Services disappeared once donor funding ended. Subsidised activities distorted incentives. Pilot initiatives succeeded in isolation but failed to scale.
MSD was a practical response to those frustrations. It shifted attention away from what aid delivered and towards how systems could generate lasting outcomes through change owned and driven by actors within those systems. Without that, impact is ephemeral.
It was never about terms and tools, but about a set of fundamentals: feasibility, sustainability, taking incentives seriously and using temporary resources to unlock real, long-term opportunities. The objective was for small amounts of aid to trigger large, sustained change by leveraging the investment, motivation and capabilities of business, government and other local actors, rather than substituting for them directly.
When “being” systemic outpaces “doing” systemic
The promise of large, sustained change from small amounts of aid is compelling – perhaps now more than ever – and MSD has caught on. What’s not to like? Terms such as systemic, facilitation and scale are now used broadly and we have seen the expansion of a systemic approach beyond economic development into areas such as education, health, climate change and social inclusion, as well as fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
This is not inherently problematic. Encouraging more people to think and act systemically has been at the heart of Springfield’s work. Broader adoption and greater diversity have brought valuable energy, ideas, talent and experimentation.
But with proliferation comes two risks: dilution of the principles and distraction from MSD’s purpose. As the approach has been more widely adopted, core principles have been weakened or substituted altogether. In trying to respond to every adjacent agenda, more and more has been loaded onto MSD until its strategic intent has blurred.
Dilution of the principles leads to system-washing: interventions wrapped in MSD language but still operating through conventional delivery logic. Programmes describe themselves as systemic because they engage multiple stakeholders, give grants to firms or publish complex analyses of the systems they work in. Facilitation is used to describe almost any relationship between actors and a programme, including paying others to do what the programme wants, regardless of their incentives. Sustainability is asserted but rarely tested; good intentions and earnest hopes that the programme’s role will eventually be “handed over” to a local actor are considered sufficient. Scale is equated with programme outreach rather than independent investment and crowding-in.
Distraction from MSD’s purpose leads to system-splaining: ever more elaborate ways of describing systems without necessarily getting better at changing them. Interventions are designed to fix a shopping list of constraints without establishing where a real economic opportunity lies. A programme can end up pursuing so many objectives simultaneously that no one can articulate what change it is trying to trigger – or how. Drawing doughnuts trumps rigorously applying the principles needed to change the system. Complexity becomes something to demonstrate rather than navigate. Frameworks intended to support judgement and action are treated as ends in themselves.
I changed it, then blamed it
Our esteemed colleagues arguing for proliferation in the DCED debate made a strong case. A pointed challenge came from the audience: “If you’re arguing for better implementation of MSD principles, who do you think the gatekeepers should be?” Or, to echo starker criticisms over the years: “Aren’t you being dogmatic purists?”
The question reminded us of a recurring internet meme that never fails to trigger a giggle: the one-star recipe review. In these videos, a perplexed and horrified narrator reads out reviews from aspiring cooks who have substituted the defining ingredient, used different cooking methods or otherwise failed to follow the published recipe, then left a one-star review complaining about the results.
While MSD is not a recipe that can be followed in a linear way, our point is analogous. Substitute kale for the carrots in a carrot cake, add quinoa or cook it on a barbecue and you should not be surprised if the result is disappointing. The same applies to MSD. Replace facilitation with handouts, ignore incentives or treat sustainability as something to worry about at the end, and you have altered the mechanisms through which the approach is supposed to produce lasting change, so you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t achieve the results MSD is designed to produce.
This is not an argument for gatekeepers or dogmatic purity. The test is not the frameworks, jargon or labels, but whether a programme applies the principles needed to achieve sustained impact. That, in our view, was always what the approach was about.
Has MSD stopped evolving?
We have nothing against adaptation. MSD was always based on what worked and what didn’t and has evolved accordingly. It has much to learn from other approaches and has already been strengthened by cross-fertilisation.
However, not all adaptation improves effectiveness. Evolution is not simply a process of change; it is a process of selection. Adaptations that deliver better results survive and spread, while those that deliver poorer results die out. Unfortunately, development has no such reliable selection mechanism. Approaches that produce weak or short-lived results – the dodgy carrot cake – can survive and spread, while those that achieve more transformative, sustainable and cost-effective impact are not necessarily rewarded or replicated.
That makes selection more important, not less. It’s not about purity but better evidence about which principles and practices produce sustained results at scale – and a willingness to test whether the claims made for them hold up. For an approach that puts sustainability at its heart, that means looking beyond results achieved during implementation to what happens afterwards: whether local actors continue to invest, adapt and replicate without programme support. Ex-post assessment should therefore be central to learning what is worth retaining, what needs adapting and what should be ditched.
Can’t partial application of MSD principles still add value?
A related point made by our debate colleagues is that even partial application of MSD principles can lead to better programming. They argued that we should celebrate programmes that use only some of those fundamentals if doing so improves their impact. Fast food still sustains you and is preferable to a dish that gives you food poisoning, it’s true.
We are all for borrowing MSD principles to improve impact. The Markets in Crisis community, for example, has drawn on MSD to argue for crisis responses that work through local market systems, leverage the capacities of non-aid actors and pave the way for recovery. This is surely an improvement on crisis programming that bypasses or undermines existing systems. But systemic change is not necessarily the primary objective. In an emergency, the priority is to get lifesaving assistance to people quickly without damaging the markets and livelihoods on which they depend.
We need to be clearer about when a systemic approach is warranted. Sometimes systemic change is not a realistic objective. Funding, timeframes or operating conditions might make it unfeasible. Recognising these limitations is not gatekeeping. It is part of the discipline: be clear about your strategic objectives, then rigorously apply the principles that will help you achieve them.
Other approaches can and should apply MSD principles where doing so strengthens impact. But applying some MSD principles does not necessarily make an intervention systemic, nor should systemic change be the objective of every development programme.
If systemic change can mean almost anything, it ultimately means very little. MSD cannot be infinitely elastic without losing its practical meaning and usefulness as an approach.
Back to basics to move forward
Our ambition for systemic change should not shrink. Today’s challenges demand a stronger systemic approach, not a looser one. But that requires more honesty about what makes a systemic approach “systemic”, greater realism about where systemic change is feasible and stronger evidence that results are sustained over time by actors continuing to invest, adapt and drive change without donor support.
The debate audience got to the heart of the matter. They were all for proliferation into new sectors and contexts, provided this did not compromise the principles that make MSD effective: “Using MSD can be trendy and there are risks of watering it down… we need to ensure the quality and principles of systems change while adapting it to new contexts and sectors.” In evolution, it’s passing on the right DNA that counts.
On reflection, “back to basics” may be more apt than “consolidation”. Getting back to basics could make MSD easier to proliferate, not harder. As the language, frameworks and conceptual overlays around MSD have multiplied, the approach has become harder to explain to people outside the field. Strip it back to what matters – its purpose, principles and practical logic – and it becomes easier for new funders and practitioners to understand what it offers, adapt it intelligently and apply it in new fields.
The choice was never really between consolidation and proliferation. MSD should continue to evolve and expand. But we need to become more discriminating about what is worth spreading. Proliferate the good stuff.