RACIDA team, alongside MSD consultant Venny Mayaka, conducted a field practicum in Mandera to put Market Systems Development (MSD) principles into action.
The focus: the Feed, fodder and milk market systems — both central to pastoral resilience and local economic stability.
Rather than asking “What inputs are missing?” we asked:
- Where are incentives misaligned?
- What functions are not performing — and why?
- Where are coordination failures undermining productivity and aggregation?
- Which actors have both the capacity and incentive to lead change?
- What would crowding-in look like in this context?
Through engagements with producers, traders, input suppliers, service providers, and county government we mapped the system beyond the value chain — examining supporting services, rules, norms, and information flows shaping market behavior.
The insight is clear:
Sustainable resilience in livestock-based economies will not come from distributing fodder or subsidizing milk aggregation alone. It requires strengthening market functions, improving commercial incentives, and enabling local actors to respond to shocks and opportunities without external dependency.
This practicum directly follows the MSD workshop recently held in Nairobi, which brought together RACIDA teams from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia to institutionalize systems thinking across project design and implementation.
The shift is deliberate and will support RACIDA to transition:
From delivery → to facilitation
From short-term support → to systemic resilience
From isolated activities → to market transformation