Market Approaches to Livelihoods Improvement (MALI)

Grant period: September 2003 - August 2005

"We want a government in Kinshasa but the gun is still the authority here," said Rocky Kongolo. "So for now we have only a half hope." In Walikale's empty market, child soldiers perched on the deserted stalls...

This excerpt from a report filed on November 14, 2003, by Declan Walsh, an independent, UK-based journalist from Walikale, a small town on the DRC's eastern frontier, captures the challenges facing The Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe with one fourth of the U.S. population, which is trying to emerge from over three decades of political, social, and economic mismanagement and almost a decade of civil war. The civil war, along with its corollary violence and insecurity, has crippled the economy and added to the suffering of the over 50 million Congolese. According to the report mentioned above, the World Food Program estimates that half a million displaced people across the Congo face severe hunger caused by to continuing violence.

It is in this context that the USAID mission in Kinshasa awarded to Pact and its two prime partners, the French NGO GRET and the U.S.-based International Foundation for Empowerment and Self-Help (IFESH), a two-year cooperative agreement to increase rural household food security and incomes in the Katanga Province through a sustainable livelihoods approach.

Pact's approach

The MALI project is built on a market-based livelihoods development approach. It will use a variety of tools and techniques to assess and develop a market for local products, improve the local production capacity, and strengthen local supply channels in Kantaga Province. These include the use of a market value-chain livelihoods analysis (MVCLA) to determine market niches and purchasing power and a bottom-up assets and vulnerability assessment tool (AVAT) to determine community-level resources and needs. Pact will also adapt its award winning women's economic empowerment program, WORTH, to increase local women's access to income generating opportunities while increasing financial stability within families and communities. The approach will result in a series of activities aimed at the following results areas:

• agricultural productivity improvement for 3000 households
• creation of 300 small, medium and micro enterprises utilizing appropriate technology for agricultural production, transformation and conservation
• rural financial service development through the combination of Pact's Worth methodology focusing on local savings mobilization and targeted technical assistance to local microfinance institutions to strengthen their service delivery capacity and deepen their outreach
• Improvement of rural communities' access to markets through mobilization, community-led infrastructure rehabilitation and management, ongoing access to market information and mutual action to promote better governance and decreased corruption and extortion.

Results

• Community mobilization of MALI in 39 communities ( 7 to 8 in each of 5 regions) with a total population of approximately 11,000 households and 93,000 persons with one or more household level agricultural, SME or Worth interventions in at least 4000 of these households
• Creation of 300 agriculture-and-related small and micro enterprises (SME's) utilizing appropriate technology for production, transformation and conservation
• In addition to better agriculture and businesses MALI is helping women to become more economically productive within their households through the WORTH program. Women involved in the program are increasing family savings, learning to read, improving their business skills and will soon have access to micro-credit. These activities while enhancing women's empowerment also increase incomes for households. Rural financial service development has engaged already 3200 women ( Pact's Worth methodology focusing on local savings mobilization/literacy); and targeted technical assistance and financing to new and existing regional and local MFIs. By the end of next quarter 5000 women will be participating in Worth in 40 villages and communities throughout Katanga
• Leveraging of $ 2 million of other donor and community resources has occurred through the parallel financing of SME support, including the incubation of appropriate technology based businesses and counterpart financing of micro-business projects.
• Improvement of rural communities' access to markets (mobilization, community-led infrastructure rehabilitation and management, ongoing access to market information and action to promote better governance and decreased corruption and extortion);
• Agricultural productivity and food security improvement for 3000 households in the core MALI communities and, where feasible, neighboring communities.
• MALI works to specifically include GPV's in its agriculture and SME activities. Well 792 GPVs are currently being supported in SME and agricultural activities. Work now is focusing on helping them to improve yields and build viable businesses. This number will probably increase with the results of MIS data collection from the Worth Program.

To view the final report in PDF, click here.