This tool was developed by CIP and partners to stimulate commercial, technological and institutional innovations and generate business opportunities that benefit small-scale farmers. This methodology structures a participatory process that involves different chain actors (public and private), including smallholders and business sector, focus on market demand, guided by facilitators and organized around three phases (diagnosis, analysis of opportunities and development of innovations).

Helps actors understand the current functioning of the market chain and key business models, design innovations that empower producer groups to engage more effectively and buyers to act in ways more amenable to smallholder farmers.

This toolkit details the proper questions to ask and best practices when designing surveys about intrahousehold asset allocation. It stresses the importance of gender for key development outcomes such as child nutrition and education. Finally it emphasizes the importance of quantitative and qualitative methods and the challenges and benefits associated with each.

This ILRI discussion paper reviews 20 value chain interventions and discusses the econometric techniques used to address the validity of findings. It explores the use of propensity score matching, instrumental variables, difference in difference, regression discontinuity, and randomized controlled trials. Qualitative and participatory methods are also examined with the idea that they may be able to better capture the complexity of value chain processes.

The Prototype guide for integrating gender into the Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA) seeks to build understanding on gender issues into value chain interventions and to create the capacities of PMCA's facilitators in applying gender analysis and developing gender-sensitive strategies to promote equitable opportunities for men and women to access to and benefit from the PMCA intervention. This guide is a prototype document developed from lessons learned during field research and exchanges between CIP researchers and PMCA practitioners from East Africa and the Andes.