Page 237 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

Notes
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Caselet Presentation: Market Development of Sudanese
Hibiscus

Alison Griffith, Practical Action

Alison Griffith, International Team Leader for Markets and Livelihoods, talked about
Practical Action’s change in focus from small enterprise development to making market
systems work for the poor. Until 2000 Practical Action (then ITDG) had been structured
around technology programmes. This approach was good at focusing on technical skills,
for example to improve tools for farmers made by blacksmiths but not on whether there
was a market for the improved products. Sustainability of interventions was consequently
always a challenge. It therefore moved to developing sustainable markets for business
services and subsequently to understand the market system in which the users of the
services i.e. small-scale producers are operating in.
A new Markets and Livelihoods programme set up in 2003 aimed to become more market
literate defined as an “awareness, understanding and capacity to build the process,
institutions, competencies and relationships that enable markets to work for poor
producers”.
Practical Action focuses now on developing market systems encompassing three main
elements:
1. Enabling business environment
2. Market chain actors and linkages
3. Service providers
Practical Action works with actors in the market including middlemen to conduct
participatory market mapping to identify the blockages in the system and the opportunities
for improvement. The emphasis is on how to increase the flow of resources from the
market to the producers. This is reflected in the market mapping which maps the flows
from the market to the producer. The challenge is to identify win-win solutions benefiting
all actors in the chain to ensure their cooperation. It is also necessary to find a balance as
the facilitator between being so heavily involved that market actors perceive it as the
organisation’s project rather than anything concerning them and having such a light touch
that very little happens.

To avoid continuing to work in a sector simply because the organisation has always
worked in that sector, Practical Action uses a methodology to select promising sub-sectors.
The hibiscus sector in Sudan was chosen because of its potential to impact large number of
farmers, mostly women (1-1.5 million), its international and national market potential (as
the main ingredient in herbal teas) and its role as a economic shock absorber. Sudan has
competitive advantages for hibiscus as it provides growing conditions which result in
colour and acidity levels favoured by importers and an absence of pests and diseases. A
Comic Relief funded project started in 2006 is targeting 40,000 farmers in the Darfur
region but it is anticipated that if interventions are successful, another 200,000 farmers in
the area will benefit. Comic Relief provided additional funds for market research. Practical
Action wanted to get the Sudanese market actors involved in this research so that they
Contd...

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