Summary of key ideas from a conversation between Mike Albu and Lucho Osorio (17 June 2009) about principles to bring SLA and Pro-Poor Market Development together.

1. MaFI Quick Chat: SLA and Pro-Poor Market Development Approaches
- four principles to build bridges between them -
These are take away ideas from a conversation with Mike Albu (note 1) on 17
June 2009. Free adaptation by Lucho Osorio (note 2).
1. Everyone agrees that markets matter to the poor. Though not central to
SLA, markets are considered by experienced SLA practitioners.
2. Both approaches (SLA and pro-poor market development) recognise that
people’s livelihoods are multi-dimensional and complex. Therefore, in order
to have a good understanding of problems and possible solutions, we need to
use systemic thinking.
3. We need to find ways of working together with these two approaches. It
is not possible to subsume one approach into the other. Instead, what we need
to do is to find some deeper-level principles that might become the foundation
stones for more effective synergies between the two approaches.
The four principles:
Principle 1: Poverty reduction at large scale: Many SL projects do not
address this issue very effectively. Conversely, by nature, market-based
approaches have impact at scale at their core.
Development work is characterised by very small budgets compared to the size
and complexity of the social problems that it tries to address. In average,
USD25-50/year are invested by development organisations per person living
under one dollar a day. Even the poorest person has more resources than that!
Impact at scale may require more or less participation (see principle 4). For
example: Rice Intensification System (RIS) vs. treadle pumps. In the former,
intensive participation is required in the transfer of the techniques (they spread
from farmer to farmer through observation, discussions, etc). In the latter, the
farmers are reached by one or a few manufacturers through marketing
strategies.
Principle 2: Institutional change: Both SLA and M4P recognise this explicitly.
SLA tends to see institutions as sources of social power whereas M4P focus
more on “the rules of the game”. However, for both approaches, changing
institutions is at the heart of poverty reduction.
Principle 3: Sustainability: pursuing deeper change in complex systems. The
concept of “sustainability” is used in different arenas: environmental, economic,
social. This is normally taken for granted and many battles occur between people
who say that one type is more important than the other. At the end of the day, all

2. of those dimensions are equally relevant. More important is the depth of
sustainability; in other words, underlying changes in the structures rather than
superficial outcomes. For example, in education you can talk about a donor who
pays a teacher to give a class. This is not sustainable. If the community finds
ways to pay for the teacher, we start to see sustainability. But one can go even
deeper and start looking at the training systems that need to exist to train current
and future teachers, and the institutions that are needed to produce pertinent
policies for education.
Principle 4: Empowerment and Participation: empowerment is an important
form of poverty reduction because it brings about inclusion, collaboration and
coordination to influence others or to solve problems.
Participation is also important but we need to avoid confusing participation as a
fundamental outcome (e.g. participation that empowers people to influence
policy-makers or the quality of a service in the market) and participation as
methodological issue (e.g. participatory assessment as a method used in
projects to obtain rich information relatively quickly). The former is fundamental to
sustainability because it is related to governance, the sources of power and the
rules of the game; the former is not; it is a means for the project team to
implement the project.
The four principles interact. For example, the interaction between participation
and impact at scale is important because it gives us clues to know when
participation is a fundamental outcome or a methodological issue: if participation
is a key prerequisite to achieve impact at scale, like in the case of the RIS, then it
is a fundamental outcome. On the other hand, if impact at scale can be achieved
without participation (e.g. the design of a vaccine by researchers), then it is a
methodological issue (a process we may use to achieve a project objective
easier, cheaper or faster).
Notes:
1. Mike Albu, International Projects Manager, Markets and Livelihoods
Programme, Practical Action. Mike is the author of the paper “Comparing M4P
and SLA Frameworks: Complementarities, Divergences and Synergies”
(www.deza.admin.ch/ressources/resource_en_168295.pdf).
2. The ideas expressed here are interpretations made by Lucho Osorio,
(International Coordinator, Markets and Livelihoods Programme, Practical Action)
from a phone conversation with Mike Albu. Any mistakes are the sole
responsibility of Lucho Osorio.