Consultancy on Market Systems Resilience Index (MSRI)

Background:

iDE is an international NGO that was founded 40 years ago with the belief that markets lift people out of poverty. We catalyze change in markets by incentivizing low-income people to establish locally-led scalable solutions that are passed down through generations and founded on mutually beneficial partnerships. We help build local economies and value chains that deliver goods and services to “last mile” customers in remote areas. We do this by building networks of small-scale entrepreneurs that power “resilient market ecosystems’’, and boosting the incomes of marginalized people, medium-sized commercial farmers and the private sector. iDE resilience-building efforts are currently assisting farmers and entrepreneurs living in nine countries to adapt to multiple environmental, public health and socio-political shocks.

About the Market Systems Resilience Index (MSRI):

The Market Systems Resilience Index (MSRI) measures the market's ability to react, withstand, and change in response to shocks and stressors. Understanding the different needs and vulnerabilities that households and market actors are required to overcome, can help identify channels through which effective interventions can be adopted. MSRI is a standard resilience measurement tool that has been pioneered by iDE and has been implemented in seven countries across the globe. By using the MSRI at two or more points in time, projects can identify needed adjustments after the first measurement round and test whether the adjusted activities led to changes in the market system. The guiding framework for the tool is depicted in the table below:

Assignment:

The MSRI tool, first developed in 2018, has now undergone several iterations to improve its quality and address particular project and country contexts. These adaptations range from an update of the tool using a Gender Equity and Social Inclusion perspective to a variant built to address the coastal communities context in a particular project in Mozambique. However, with each update and adaptation the tool gets stretched and needs to be aligned with its conceptual framework to ensure its validity and rigor. To this end, the iDE team is seeking a consultant with relevant experience in index building and ideally some conceptual background on resilience to help us ensure alignment of the current version of the tool with the foundations and next steps established in its follow-on peer-reviewed article and the current literature on market systems resilience. This process would entail refining the questions to ensure they are targeted to address relevant elements of resilience that are being assessed. The final step would be to review and refine iDE’s proposed process for making future adaptations to the tool, that would ensure any change to the tool follows robust steps and parameters that maintain the integrity of the tool.

Objectives:

The key deliverables for this assignment are as follows:

• Update existing literature review to ensure the conceptual framework is in alignment with the most updated in the Market Systems Resilience sector.
  • Review existing literature and conceptual framework for the current version of MSRI to understand what elements of the literature have been incorporated into the tool.
  • Provide guidance on the recommended time frame between data collections based on existing literature on MSRI indicators.
• Review the current questionnaires that make up the MSRI to ensure the measure is as lean as can be. The aim for this task is to reduce as many of the questions as possible without losing any critical assessment of the determinants for resilience.
  • Ensure that all the indicators that currently are mapped to each determinant have literature backing their inclusion as an essential measure of market system resilience.
  • Reduce any questions that are similar, cover similar topics, or are not needed.
  • Evaluate the value of current open-ended questions and provide recommendations on whether they should be in a follow-up tool or remain integrated into the MSRI tool, as they are not currently incorporated into the scoring of the index.
  • Update sample guidance for clarity, ensuring representativeness, and rigor.
  • Provide recommendations on how to address instances where baselines have already been implemented with the current version of the tool
• Review the drafted adaptation process document to ensure that the steps described are robust enough so changes to the tool do not jeopardize the conceptual framework:
  • Provide guidance on what elements should be included or removed from the current process.
  • Recommending parameters/rules around changes to maintain a high quality standard. Clearly distinguish