Market Systems Development for Better Grant Applications

USAID/Kosovo Compete Activity is a five-year program to promote resilient, self-sustaining market systems and to facilitate the private sector’s improved competitiveness in local, regional, and global markets. The Activity utilizes a market systems development (MSD) approach and focuses on three key export-oriented sectors – Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), Wood Processing, and Food Processing – to sustainably increase competitiveness.

Successful MSD programs engage a broad range of actors within the market system to develop and implement sustainable solutions to systemic constraints. USAID Compete issued Annual Program Statements (APS) for the project’s grant facility to solicit such ideas from the market, but found it had extremely high rejection rates for the first pool of proposed concepts. This resulted in considerable waste of staff time reviewing and providing feedback on large numbers of wholly unsuitable concepts. Using CLA methods, Compete determined that limited understanding of MSD among potential partners contributed significantly to the poor quality and unsuitability of the initial concept notes the project received.
 
Compete adapted to this learning by engaging in significant MSD sensitization and education for potential partners as part of the APS process. The Compete team also introduced co-creation as a method for collaborating with potential partners to cultivate promising ideas into sustainable and systemic activity concepts which aligned with MSD principles. Finally, as part of a three-day Pause & Reflect, the team collectively reviewed the grants process to identify bottlenecks affecting its speediness and smoothness and come up with recommendations to ease blockages. This resulted in higher quality and more suitable concept note submissions, lower rejection rates, and more productive use of staff time.