Skip to main content

Participatory Market Systems Development Toolkit

Participatory Market Systems Development (PMSD) is an approach that can help you understand and influence markets to make positive changes to the lives of marginalised groups.

PMSD was developed by Practical Action following decades of experience of working with smallholder agriculture and energy markets. It’s an approach we’ve used in programmes around the world, and continued to revise to take into account our learnings and changes to the internal and external environments.

This guidance includes a mixture of tools developed by Practical Action as well as some created by other organisations that fit into a PMSD approach. The toolkit was designed as a resource for Practical Action programmes, but is freely available for anyone to use.

Learn more about PMSD and how it can influence markets to make a positive change.

Watch video
Illustration shows interconnected circles with drawings of a truck, a person holding produce, another person working, and a hand sketching birds, with

PMSD draws on four principles that can be applied to a varying degree according to context:

  • Systems thinking helps teams to understand the relationships and dynamics that determine how inclusive markets actually are, ultimately enabling the root causes of market system problems to be addressed.
  • Facilitation ensures projects play a temporary role that encourages behaviour change and ownership amongst the individuals and institutions that determine how markets work.
  • Participation from a wide range of players – from businesses to marginalised groups – reshapes power dynamics and creates new types of relationships that aid the development of inclusive and resilient markets.
  • Gender aware strategies ensure that interventions benefit women, while gender transformative strategies tackle power relations to change the rules of the game.

Read more about the core principles of PMSD.

Tools Directory

All the tools and guidance in one place.

Useful for: advanced practitioners familiar with PMSD, who have a defined need and want to add something new to their repertoire.

Explore the directory

Use Cases

How the tools are relevant to different stages in the programme cycle.

Useful for: people new to PMSD, or who have a specific function or assignment to accomplish.

Learn more

Case Studies & Adaptations

Showcasing different combinations of tools in a variety of contexts.

Useful for: getting a sense of PMSD in the field, and for adapting it beyond agriculture.

Read More

PMSD vs. market systems

PMSD shares many common features with the wider Market Systems Development (MSD) sector, but the key difference lies in the Participation principle.

Read more