What is PMSD?

PMSD stands for Participatory Market Systems Development. It is an approach designed by Practical Action to improve how markets work to reduce poverty sustainably and at scale. 

PMSD tries to achieve this with the participation, ownership and leadership of the market actors who belong  to those market systems; not with the leadership and ownership of the NGO. Participation is not just about the NGO consulting the market actors, coming up with the solutions that make sense for the NGO, and then convincing the market actors to implement these solutions. PMSD can only work if the NGO behaves as a facilitator. In other words, as an agent who makes it easier for market actors to transform their market systems in ways that make sense to them.

PMSD is also pro-poor (the term that is starting to dominate the jargon is "inclusive").  This means that the relative benefits for the poor (I prefer the term "marginalised") have to be greater than the relative benefits for the rest of better off actors. 

So, what does this idea of "relative benefits" or gains mean? It means that the benefits are relative to the initial situation of each actor.  For example, if the average marginalised farmer makes an average of 1 dollar/day at the beginning of the project and two years down the line they are making 2 dollar/day, their relative gain was 100%.  Now, if we look at a successful retailer who was making an average of 1,000 dollar/day at the beginning of the project and two years down the line they are making 1,200 dollar/day, their relative gain was 20%.  In this case, the impacts of the project are considered pro-poor.

PMSD is without doubt a fascinating approach to the field of Inclusive Market Development (IMD) that combines economics, sociology, anthropology, politics, business management, social communication, systems theory, complexity, psychology and even quantum physics and zen...

Personally, IMD and PMSD in particular are a manifestation of my ideals: collaboration, win-win outcomes, synergies, openness, fluidity, connectedness, tenderness, adaptability, and appreciation of the infinite complexity of the universe around us.