Improving the Uptake of Humanitarian Market Analysis 
FINAL EVALUATION 
Of
Piloted Best Practices 
© Rinchin Gaekwad 
“A fledgling market place in six months old refugee settlement in Lamwo, northern Uganda”
MAY 2018
By Helene Juillard & Rinchin Gaekwad 
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Table of Contents 
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................. 3
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 10
1.1. Background .......................................................................................................................... 10
1.2. The best practices and their enabling environment............................................................ 11
1.3. Pilot planning and implementation ..................................................................................... 13
1.3.1. The IRC Niger Country Office....................................................................................... 13
1.3.2. CRS Nigeria Country Office.......................................................................................... 16
1.3.3. Mercy Corps Uganda Country Office........................................................................... 19
1.4. Evaluation goals, objectives and scope................................................................................ 22
2. Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 22
2.1. Data Collection..................................................................................................................... 22
2.2. Limitations............................................................................................................................ 24
3. The effectiveness of the piloted practices.................................................................................... 25
3.1. Creating an enabling environment for the uptake of market data ..................................... 25
3.2. Achieving the intended results............................................................................................ 28
3.3. How market data has been used to inform programming .................................................. 33
3.4. Team Acceptance................................................................................................................. 35
4. Pilot efficiency .............................................................................................................................. 36
5. Unintended effects of the pilots................................................................................................... 38
6. Lessons learned ............................................................................................................................ 40
7. Potential for sustainability and replicability................................................................................. 41
7.1. Sustainability........................................................................................................................ 41
7.2. Replicability.......................................................................................................................... 42
8. Conclusions................................................................................................................................... 44
9. Annexes ........................................................................................................................................ 45
9.1. Summary of Best Practices .................................................................................................. 45
9.2. Evaluation Matrix................................................................................................................. 47
9.3. Documents reviewed ........................................................................................................... 49
9.4. List of Key Informants.......................................................................................................... 50
9.5. Questionnaires (KIIs and survey) ......................................................................................... 51
Table 1: Time and cost logs ................................................................................................................... 24
Table 2: Activities and outputs’ status update for each pilot ............................................................... 28
Table 3 Programmatic decisions informed by market data .................................................................. 33
Figure 1: Project key steps .................................................................................................................... 11
Figure 2 Identified 11 best practices ..................................................................................................... 12
Figure 3: Pilots’ timeline........................................................................................................................ 13
Graph 1: Responses by data collection team members in Niger and Nigeria to online survey ........... 36
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Executive Summary 
1. INTRODUCTION 
BACKGROUND 
In October 2016, IRC in collaboration with Mercy Corps and CRS launched a research project with the 
aim of helping to facilitate the systematic use of market information in humanitarian programming 
across sectors. One of the core components of this initiative was looking at how organizations can 
effectively address the barriers to the uptake of market information in programming. It consisted of 
several steps involving the identification, piloting and subsequent evaluation of best practices which 
can increase the systematic use of market analysis and the uptake of resulting data. In early 2017, a 
review was conducted to identify these best practices, a selection of which were subsequently piloted 
in Niger, Nigeria and Uganda. An evaluation was then commissioned to generate learning on the 
effectiveness of the piloted practices to address barriers to market analysis uptake. The project’s 
ultimate objective is to contribute to the more consistent use of market information to help shape 
program design and adaptation. 
This document presents the findings from the final evaluation of the piloted practices. It first provides 
an overview of these practices and their genesis (Section 1), before spelling out the evaluation 
methodology (Section 2). The report then focuses on the pilots’ effectiveness, efficiency and 
unintended effects (Section 3, 4, 5), sharing the lessons learned (Section 6) and finally discussing the 
potential for sustainability and replicability (Section 7).
THE BEST PRACTICES AND THEIR ENABLING ENVIRONMENT 
The review process prior to the pilots identified eleven best practices which cut across key steps of a 
market analysis exercise: 
Best Practice 1: Market information is gathered in pre-crisis times to inform future emergency 
programming, disaster risk reduction programming and market support interventions. 
Best practice 2: The scope of market analysis is broad enough to encompass formal and informal 
influences on both market supply and demand and as such ensure a more complete understanding of 
market supply chain dynamics. 
Best practice 3: Operational departments at field level take part in market assessments. 
Best practice 4: The market analysis process engages diverse team members, from decision makers to 
communications staff and market assessment enumerators, all of whom understand the rationale for 
market data collection. 
Best practice 5: Private sector or specialized service providers play an increased role in market 
assessments and monitoring. 
Best practice 6: Data is collected from a range of market actors (including consumers) within the 
market system. 
Best practice 7: Humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis. 
Best practice 8: Market analysis findings are shared in coordination meetings. 
Best practice 9: Adaptive management is employed to ensure the program team is able and willing to 
adapt the response option based on market assessment and market monitoring information. 
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Best practice 10: Real-time market monitoring data, collected via mobile devices, facilitates program 
decision-making. The use of shared platforms for market information facilitates regular collection and 
use of data that is high quality and standardized, and thus readily comparable. 
Best practice 11: Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring. 
In addition, the report identifies certain pre-requisites to create the necessary enabling environment 
for uptake of market data: a) adequate resources to collect and analyze market data, b) the capacity
and awareness of the team on the added value of market data to improve programming, c) the quality
of the market data collected so that it can be trusted and ultimately used, and finally, d) an adequate 
dissemination of this collected data. 
PILOT COUNTRY CONTEXTS
Following the best practices research, each implementing organization identified a country office 
where the above-mentioned pre-requisites were thought to be met to host a pilot: Nigeria for CRS, 
Niger for IRC and Uganda for Mercy Corps. Based on each context’s specificities, each country team 
selected one primary best practice and optionally, one or more secondary practices, to pilot. The pilots 
took place in mid-late 2017, running for about six months in Uganda and Niger, and for three months 
in Nigeria. The detailed theory of change for each pilot is provided in the full report. 
IRC Niger 
IRC in Niger was implementing a 12-month e-voucher for food assistance project for 4,000 households 
in the Diffa region. Market assessments undertaken in October 2015 and March 2016 indicated that 
the main markets in the area were functioning and well supplied. IRC, in partnership with Save the 
Children, had been monitoring the prices of about 50 commodities (food and non-food items) using 
mobile data collection. This data was primarily used to ensure the adequacy of the voucher value and 
to negotiate prices with the traders who were part of the voucher scheme. 
The main barriers to the increased use of market information in programming for this context were 
thought to be limited ownership of market analysis by field level staff (as Niamey/NY-based market 
specialists had led previous assessments), frequency of monitoring driven by the donors’ reporting 
calendar, a long list of 50 commodities to be monitored and cumbersome monitoring tools. Thus, the 
IRC intended to strengthen its market-related data collection and use by broadening the scope of 
market indicators it was collecting, doing so using mobile data collection and using the data to adapt 
its programming. Therefore, the team picked three best practices: 
1. Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring 
2. Real-time market monitoring data using mobile devices facilitates program decision making 
3. Adaptive management is employed to ensure the program team is able and willing to adapt 
the response option based on market assessment and market monitoring information 
CRS Nigeria 
CRS in Nigeria is implementing a 22-month Food for Peace (FFP) project to support 11,396 households 
in Yobe and about 3,751 households in Borno State using e-voucher for food assistance. Market 
monitoring for this response is critically needed, as 94-100% of host community members rely on 
markets as their primary food source. In addition, the context is highly insecure and the primary 
currency is volatile. CRS has been conducting market price monitoring monthly in order to identify and 
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analyze trends related to market prices, and has been collecting relevant market data to ensure 
informed decision making in case of an abrupt rise/fall in price of certain food items.
The main challenges to the increased usage of market information the team faced were the reliance 
on inconsistently conducted PDMs to obtain market data, a lack of data at trader level, lack of data 
related to Shelter or other NFI commodities, and the exercise being driven largely by indicators needed 
for donor reports. For the pilot, CRS chose to integrate the best practice looking at comprehensive 
market monitoring into its ongoing cash transfer programming. 
Mercy Corps Uganda
Mercy Corps Uganda’s programs focus on economic recovery and development, agriculture and food 
security, and emergency response for refugees. The pilot aimed to build on two existing development 
programs: a) the DYNAMIC program, which aimed to improve engagement of youth with markets and 
economic opportunities, and b) the TRAIL program, which aimed to improve access to inputs and 
services and high-value output markets for crops. The country program had made strong investments 
in using analysis of market systems to design and improve long-run market systems development 
programs, with the hope that this legacy can help inform better programming to address the influx of 
refugees from South Sudan. 
In terms of initial barriers to the increased use of market information, the Lamwo Mercy Corps team 
had significant experience in market development but a lack of humanitarian programing experience 
was thought to have the potential to delay emergency activities. There was also no existing 
collaboration between development, humanitarian and private sector actors to engage in market 
analysis. Finally, the target settlement, Palabek Ogili, was new, with only minimal humanitarian 
interventions having taken place and very limited humanitarian market data available. 
Given the pre-existing presence of development actions and the need to respond to the refugee influx 
in the region, Mercy Corps found the inclusion of the following best practices to be strategic and timely: 
1. Humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis. 
2. Private sector or specialized service providers play an increased role in market assessments 
and monitoring. 
3. Data is collected from a range of market actors (including consumers) within the market 
system. 
2. EVALUATION METHODOLOGY 
The evaluation looked at the pilots’ effectiveness, efficiency, and unintended effects. The evaluation 
methodology was largely qualitative in nature, consisting of a desk review of project documents, 
interviews with 30 key informants (pilot staff, external stakeholders, market experts), field 
observations and a short online survey targeting data collection staff. The evaluator spent a week 
each in Niger, Nigeria and Uganda consulting relevant team members about their experience with the 
pilots. 
LIMITATIONS: The pilots were implemented in fast moving, emergency response settings. Thus, 
competing project priorities, resource constraints, and at times, security challenges, led to 
considerable delays to the pilot implementation. This has prevented all three pilot teams from realizing 
the full potential of the best practices. It also reinforces the importance of the factors outlined as 
essential pre-requisites. While the evaluation was able to capture some successes resulting from the 
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best practices, it is too early to see concrete evidence of programmatic adaptations/design. 
Additionally, assessing the pilots’ efficiency proved challenging due to inadequately or inconsistently 
logged time and costs. 
3. EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PILOTED PRACTICES 
CREATING AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR THE UPTAKE OF MARKET DATA 
All three pilots affirmed the importance of ensuring an enabling environment - irrespective of the 
context - for the best practice to harness positive outcomes. This environment is characterized by the 
four essential pre-requisites outlined earlier: adequate resources, capacity, quality and dissemination. 
The absence of some of these pre-requisites has hampered the effectiveness of the pilots. Yet, because 
of the pilots, the teams are more likely to use market data. The effects of the pilots thus could 
materialize over a longer period of time once teams internalize the best practices and continue the 
activities in a consistent manner. 
All interviewed team members reported an increase in their market sensitivity, but this has yet to be 
reflected in practice. Some pilots struggled with staff availability while strong management 
commitment to the pilot success was seen as an enabler to achieving results seen across all pilots. The 
Uganda pilot team was able to mobilize an additional resources and extra dedicated staff hours, albeit 
with delay. And while improving the intrinsic quality of the market data was not an intended result of 
the pilot, efforts were made to ensure market data was fit for purpose. However, there was some 
hesitation to trust the data due to quality or relevance issues, in part due to some resistance to change 
and a lack of quality control. On the positive side, staff members in Nigeria wanted to add more probing 
questions to the market monitoring tool, while WASH and other NFI teams also showed an interest in 
using market data for programming. The Uganda team managed to mobilize partners, convince them 
to step outside their silos and kick start an active collaboration over market analysis. The anticipated 
outcome of this strong engagement is likely to be an increased use of market data. 
ACHIEVING THE INTENDED RESULTS 
In Niger, most of the pilot support activities (i.e. kick-off workshop, monitoring check-in calls and 
remote guidance by consultant) took place during the course of the pilot. Yet the main activity (i.e. the 
actual collection and analysis of market data using the revised market indicators that go beyond price), 
has not been fully completed. It is mostly due to competing priorities within the team along the fact 
that the pilot leads had assumed a functioning, fairly regular market monitoring system whereas it was 
done on an ad-hoc basis. This resulted in the majority of the intended outcomes being only partially 
fulfilled. The main gap lies in the lack of use of the market data to inform programming. 
In Nigeria, the pilot team accomplished its goal of identifying non-price market monitoring indicators, 
which were reported by informants to be relevant. However, there is still no evidence of how the 
indicator data feeds into programming. The pilot also demonstrated a gender lens while designing and 
planning the pilot activities. However, in practice, this was not fully realized. For instance, vendors 
were not profiled by gender. This pilot did succeed in making teams feel better prepared for a future 
response, although actual preparedness will depend on how quickly teams are able to learn lessons 
from the pilot experience and improve their monitoring activity to obtain reliable data. In a way, the 
piloted best practices’ actual contribution towards emergency preparedness can only be assessed once 
the teams engage in another wave of emergency response. 
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In Uganda, the pilot experience revealed that while there is scope for using development market 
analysis to inform humanitarian programming, a critical first step is to ensure all actors are ready to 
collaborate and possess adequate knowledge of market-based approaches. The pilot was able to 
establish such collaboration; however, the objective of leveraging development market data to inform 
humanitarian programming was not fully implemented. The creation of a Market Development 
Working Group was a considerable achievement which helped to provide a platform for collaboration 
and knowledge-sharing among actors. It also enabled the launch of a joint market assessment under 
the stewardship of Mercy Corps. Finally, the Uganda pilot successfully consulted with a variety of 
market actors including from the private sector, although it is too early to say whether or how these 
opinions will translate into program design. 
HOW MARKET DATA HAS BEEN USED TO INFORM PROGRAMMING 
There is not much evidence of market data being used to inform programming within the project life 
span. Pilot teams in Niger and Niger largely thought it was premature to predict how the pilot could 
help adjust ongoing or future projects before the monitoring exercises’ findings are shared. Yet they 
shared several intended uses during the evaluation – to confirm the relevance of the aid modality and 
the transfer value, identify new vendors or commodities to include, and in general to inform 
emergency response as opposed to informing contingency plans or supporting markets pre-crisis. This 
indicates that there remains scope for building the knowledge of market-based approaches of the pilot 
teams so that managers and decision-makers are able to use data in more varied ways. 
In addition to the above-mentioned programmatic decisions, interviewees highlighted other intended 
uses of the market data, such as to inform long-term livelihoods programs in Uganda, facilitate 
operation’s work in Nigeria and raise their organizational profile by developing improved reports to 
donors across all pilots. 
TEAM ACCEPTANCE 
Team acceptance (i.e. the willingness of the pilot team members to conduct and continue the piloted 
best practices) was a singular success across all pilots. Pilot team members, including those involved 
in managing and conducting the data collection, displayed a high level of acceptance and keenness for 
the best practices. Teams across all three pilots largely found the best practices user-friendly and easy 
to integrate. 
4. PILOT EFFICIENCY 
It is clear that different best practices incur varying levels of effort. The perception of efficiency, both 
in terms of cost and time, largely varied from one interviewed expert to another between those who 
viewed experimental learning-focused pilot activities as good value for money, while others thought 
the inefficiencies risked impeding uptake and the continuation of the piloted activities. In any case, 
across all pilots, the absence of certain pre-requisites led to a decrease in efficiency and the need to 
dedicate more resources to meet those before being able to focus on the best practice itself. 
The pilot teams, however, more globally agreed that the potential benefits of the pilots far outweighed 
the costs. The adequacy of existing staff capacity and the use of technology have been highlighted as 
key drivers of cost efficiency. The Niger team cited the improved structure of their market monitoring 
questionnaire as an important contributor towards more efficient use of staff time. In Nigeria, there 
were some divergent views. Some felt the activity had good value for time spent, while others, looking 
at 100-120 hours spent on the pilot, expressed concerns for the activity’s sustainability. 
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5. UNINTENDED EFFECTS 
The main unintended effect of the pilot was on the creation of an enabling environment to further 
encourage the uptake of market data. The primary strategy was to implement the pilot in country 
offices that already possessed this enabling environment. Since it is unlikely that most of the 
humanitarian settings would present the perfect enabling environment, the implementation of the 
best practice has had positive effects beyond its boundaries by creating an overall “market friendly” 
environment. 
The pilots did not seem to have experienced any critical negative unintended effects. The only 
recurrent negative effect that the Niger and Nigeria teams experienced was antagonizing non-qualified 
vendors – both teams have identified the problem and are considering mitigation measures. A few 
more unintended effects unique to each pilot are detailed in the full report. 
6. LESSONS LEARNED 
Through the pilots, several lessons learned were identified, including some specific to specific best 
practices which are detailed in the full report. The main lessons learned are as followed: 
1. Key to ensuring that market data is used to inform programing is the identification of program 
decisions that require market data. In doing so, teams can better understand what data needs 
to be analyzed, by when, how frequently and by using which data collection tools. 
2. The presence of pre-requisites (i.e. an enabling environment) is vital to the successful 
implementation of best practices. This seems to be due to the pre-requisites indicating a level 
of institutionalization of market analysis. Essentially, lack of institutional interest in market 
analysis significantly effects the uptake of market analysis. 
3. Successful best practice implementation requires staff who are able to ‘think out of the box’ 
and take risks, as the best practices often require a slight deviation from ‘normal practice’. 
What is needed now is for best practice methods to become ‘normal practice’.
4. Certain best practices, such as the one aiming for collaborative market analysis implemented 
in Uganda, are more effort intensive then others, but can also harness bigger outcomes. When 
deciding which best practices to implement, organizations should consider the level of impact, 
and not only level of effort, that its team at-large wants to have. This should allow 
organizations to better match available resources with ambitions. 
5. Clear scoping of the different market stakeholders and market places is key to making sure 
that market data collection does not become too cumbersome. This may require the 
formalization of a 2-3 paged Market Data collection protocol to ensure market data is collected 
and analyzed with the appropriate disaggregation and in a consistent manner. 
7. POTENTIAL FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND REPLICABILITY 
Key informants on the whole seemed quite positive when asked about the prospects of sustainability 
for the best practices they piloted. However, many noted that while the pilot experience has garnered 
a strong level of will and acceptance among teams, there are certain factors that will ultimately 
determine the continuity (and replicability) of the pilots: a) adequacy of resources (time, funds, staff 
and capacity), b) notable improvement in the quality and frequency of market analysis, c) integration 
of the activity on a systemic level, d) communicating the results and e) garnering management and 
donor support. 
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Across all pilot teams, the key informants have indicated an interest to implement these best practices 
despite the additional effort they incur. The best practices are a very flexible array of solutions in that 
they offer something of value corresponding to the extent of resources, time and skills a team might 
have – from something less resource-intensive, such as inclusion of non-price indicators in an existing 
monitoring activity, to larger efforts such as setting up collaboration between development and 
humanitarian actors. Thus, given the generally high team acceptance of the best practices and the 
assured benefits they offer, it is worthwhile to replicate these best practices in more contexts, teams 
and programs. The pilots seem to be applicable across a range of contexts, including rapid onset 
disasters, protracted refugee contexts and complex emergencies. Thus, despite the short 
implementation timeframe for these pilots, the best practices piloted could be replicated, as long as 
the vital pre-requisites are in place and it is within institution’s interest to ensure success. 
8. CONCLUSION 
The best practices have proven to be successful in creating an enabling environment for the uptake of 
market data. In each of the evaluated country offices, the team now has the adequate level of market 
awareness and are conscious of the importance of quality data, while decision-makers are keen to use 
market data to inform programming and ready to dedicate adequate resources to do so. Yet due to 
competing priorities and the need to build the team capacity before implementing the best practices, 
some of the pilot activities and therefore outcomes could not be fully realized. As a result, most of the 
pilots have not led yet to programmatic decision-making informed by markets. The fact that the 
selected country offices did not, in practice, meet all of the identified pre-requisites is a missed 
opportunity. But this is an imponderable in the humanitarian sector: there is no such thing as the 
perfect piloting environment. 
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1. Introduction 
1.1. Background 
There is an increased recognition in the humanitarian sector of the importance of analyzing markets 
before implementing a project and of conducting regular market monitoring. This is evidenced by the 
plethora of tools and guidance to assess and analyze markets that organizations have developed and 
by the inclusion of market analysis in various standard-bearing guidance documents. 
Yet market data is not consistently and regularly used to inform project design, nor to make 
programmatic decisions. For example, a 2014 IRC study of 40 EMMA reports found that only 58% had 
led to program-related decision-making. 
So, what is stopping organizations and practitioners from making use of market data to implement 
better projects? The reasons are both vertical (i.e. the capacity and interest in market analysis and 
market-based programming lie within the hands of a few international technical specialists) and 
horizontal (i.e. the market related capacities primarily lie within the food security sector). Market 
assessment and analysis are still not considered routine embedded practices at field level but rather 
are often treated as a standalone, resource-heavy exercise. In addition, there is a lack of guidance on 
which programmatic decisions market data can inform, and which data are needed for specific 
decisions, meaning that practitioners sometimes face the challenge of navigating lengthy market 
assessment tools and approaches without having clearly defined the appropriate scope and depth of 
analysis. These different elements constitute the main barriers to the uptake of market data that the 
IRC, in partnership with CRS and Mercy Corps, aimed to address in the USAID/OFDA-funded Improving 
the Uptake of Humanitarian Market Analysis project. 
Beginning in October 2016, this 20-month project has aimed to identify and develop innovative 
approaches to addressing the above-mentioned barriers to the consistent use of market data in 
humanitarian programming. The ultimate goal of the project was to facilitate the systematic use of 
market information in the design of humanitarian programs across sectors. To this end, the project 
encompassed three complementary components:1
1. Developing a framework to clearly define the market information required for specific 
programmatic decisions, namely the need for and design of market support interventions; the 
appropriateness of cash-based assistance or local procurement; and, where appropriate, the 
cash transfer value, frequency and payment mechanism. 
2. Identifying, piloting and evaluating new approaches for collecting and managing market 
information for program design and adaptation. 
3. Strengthening field-level use of market analysis techniques through the organization of 
learning exchanges and the translation of important market assessment resources. 
This document focuses on the second component of the project (subsequently referred to as “the 
project” for the sake of simplicity), which looked at how organizations can effectively address the 
barriers to the uptake of market information in programming. It consisted of several steps involving 
the identification, piloting and subsequent evaluation of best practices to increase the systematic use 
 
1
 Improving the uptake of humanitarian market analysis project proposal narrative, 2014, the IRC 
11
of market analysis and the uptake of resulting data. In early 2017, a review was conducted to identify 
examples of where humanitarian market analysis had influenced programming and to distill specific 
practices from those examples2
. Once the list of practices had been established, the project partners 
identified host countries for pilot studies and an appropriate practice or practices to pilot in each 
country. During the pilots, the practices were adapted to the host country contexts, and 
implementation plans for each host country were developed and carried out. An evaluation at the end 
of the pilot period – resulting in this report – was intended to generate learning on the effectiveness 
of the practices to address the barriers to market analysis uptake, and, ultimately, to contribute to the 
more consistent use of market information to help shape program design and adaptation. 
Figure 1: Project key steps 
1.2. The best practices and their enabling 
environment 
The eleven best practices to increase the uptake of market data are documented in the Best Practice 
Report.
3
 This report describes each best practice organized as per the market analysis steps and 
provides concrete field examples of use. A detailed summary of the practices is provided in Annex 1. 
 
2
 During the project a best practice has been defined as a method, technique or approach that is worth replicating as it has 
either the proven track record or potential to encourage the collection and uptake of market analysis. It is not necessarily a 
practice that is well established, nor one that is necessarily appropriate or desirable in every context. 
3
 The full-length best practice report can be accessed at https://rescue.box.com/s/dcfenzht3f1wzdjhfd3p7lcux06huely. 
Consultant 
team identifies 
best practices
IRC, Mercy 
Corps & CRS 
select country 
offices to host 
the pilots
Country offices 
select best 
practices to 
pilot
Selected best 
practices are 
implemented 
through pilots
Learning is 
generated 
through the 
evaluation of 
the pilots 
12
Figure 2 Identified 11 best practices 
In addition, the report identifies general factors influencing 
the uptake of information in the humanitarian sector, 
which create a necessary enabling environment. Those 
factors, later referred to as “pre-requisites”, should be met 
irrespective of the context for any best practice to harness 
positive outcomes in the increased uptake of market data. 
These are: adequate resources to collect and analyze 
market data, the capacity and awareness of the team on 
the added value of market data to improve programming, 
the quality of the market data collected so that it can be 
trusted and ultimately used and finally an adequate 
dissemination of this collected data. 
Setting the scope 
of the assessment
• Market information is gathered in pre-crisis times to inform future emergency programming, disaster 
risk reduction programming and market support interventions. 
•The scope of market analysis is broad enough to encompass formal and informal influences on both 
market supply and demand and as such ensure a more complete understanding of market supply 
chain dynamics. 
Identifying the 
market team
•Operational departments at field level take part in market assessments. 
•The market analysis process engages with diverse team members, from decision makers to 
communication staff and market assessment enumerators, all of whom understand the rationale for 
market data collection.
Collecting market 
data
•Private sector or specialized service providers play an increased role in market assessments and 
monitoring. 
•Data is collected from a range of market actors (including consumers) within the market system.
Analyzing and 
sharing market 
data 
•Humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis.
•Market analysis findings are shared in coordination meetings. 
•Adaptive management is employed to ensure the program team is able and willing to adapt the 
response option based on market assessment and market monitoring information.
Monitoring 
markets
•Real-time market monitoring data, collected via mobile devices, facilitates program decision-making. 
The use of shared platforms for market information facilitates regular collection and use of data that is 
high quality and standardized, and thus readily comparable.
•Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring. 
Quality
Dissemination
Capacity
Resources
13
1.3. Pilot planning and implementation 
Following the best practices research, each implementing organization identified a country office 
where the above-mentioned pre-requisites were thought to be met to host a pilot: Nigeria for CRS, 
Niger for IRC and Uganda for Mercy Corps. At this point, each country office was requested to select a 
primary best practice to pilot and possibly one or more secondary practices, based on which practices 
seemed most relevant to the specific context. 
Each pilot was guided and launched by the IRC’s consultant team, though implementation was the 
responsibility of the respective country team. Each pilot started with an in-country training workshop 
for relevant country office staff members that was led by a member of the consultant team. The 
designated consultant then provided remote technical support throughout the pilot implementation 
period in the form of follow-up calls and emails.4
The pilots took place in mid-late 2017. They ran for about six months in both Uganda and Niger. 
Because of some delays in identifying an appropriate host country for CRS, the Nigeria pilot only lasted 
about three months. Figure 6 depicts the timeline of each pilot. A detailed presentation of each pilot 
is given below. The piloted practices are expected to continue as activities have been embedded in the 
regular activities of the country office in which they sit. Yet as the project is coming to an end, the IRC 
has commissioned an evaluation of the pilots. 
Figure 3: Pilots’ timeline
1.3.1. The IRC Niger Country Office 
Context5
 
IRC in Niger was implementing a 12-month food assistance project for 4,000 households in the Diffa 
region. The project disbursed cash assistance through an e-voucher system on a monthly basis, for a 
period of four months to host population households and for a period of eight months to displaced 
 
4
 Lili Mohiddin for Uganda and Nigeria, and Helene Juillard for Niger 
5
 From pilot implementation plan 
Niger pilot
Uganda pilot
Nigeria pilot
May 2017 Nov 2017
June 2017 Nov 2017
Dec 2017 Sept 2017
14
households.6
 Market assessments undertaken in October 2015 and March 2016 indicated that the 
main markets in the area were functioning and well supplied with essential food commodities. Traders 
had the capacity to increase their supply, and markets were well integrated despite sporadic physical 
access constraints. Prices were in a decreasing trend. 
Since the initial assessments, the IRC, in partnership with Save the Children, had been monitoring the 
prices of about 50 commodities (food and non-food items) using mobile data collection. This data was 
primarily used to ensure the adequacy of the voucher value and to negotiate prices with the traders 
who were part of the voucher scheme. 
Main barriers to market data uptake 
Previous market assessments in Niger had been led by market specialists based in Niamey/NY, which 
may have limited the ownership of market analysis by field-level staff. The IRC team in Niger conducted
market monitoring, but before the pilot start had largely treated this an ad hoc exercise primarily 
aligned with donors’ reporting calendars. That meant that collecting market data was not necessarily 
use oriented, i.e. not rooted in programmatic decisions this data should inform. In addition, market 
monitoring in country had mostly been limited to price monitoring, providing a fairly narrow picture 
of the functionality of the markets in the area. Finally, the way the market monitoring tools were set 
up was not user friendly, requiring the enumerators to go back and forth to the same traders quite a 
few times during the same monitoring exercise. 
Selected best practices for piloting 
As the IRC was looking to inform future programming in the area, it wanted to strengthen its market 
related data collection and use by: broadening the scope of market indicators it collects, doing so using 
mobile data collection and using the data to adapt its programming. Therefore, the team picked three 
best practices: 
1. Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring. 
2. Real-time market monitoring data, collected via mobile devices, facilitates program decision￾making. 
3. Adaptive management is employed to ensure the program team is able and willing to adapt 
the response option based on market assessment and market monitoring information. 
These best practices intended to address the identified barriers to market data uptake in the following 
ways: 
1. Best practice 1: Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring. To 
provide usable and useful information, market monitoring should go beyond price monitoring, 
looking at volume of trade, availability and quality of key commodities, etc. Market data 
collection should take place as part of regular program activities and be tailored to data 
needed to inform programming. This best practice also includes designing tools to support the 
translation of monitoring data into actions. 
2. Best practice 2: Real-time market monitoring data, collected via mobile devices, facilitates 
program decision-making. To facilitate uptake, market data should reach decision makers in 
a timely manner. Mobile data collection saves on data coding time and supports swift data 
 
6
 IRC Niger Technical Description FFP Project
15
analysis. The team in Niger was already using mobile data collection, but felt it was not 
maximizing its potential to enhance the efficiency of data collection and analysis. 
3. Best practice 3: Adaptive management is employed to ensure the program team is able and 
willing to adapt the response option based on market assessment and market monitoring 
information. As mentioned, the Niger team had not been routinely analyzing its price data, let 
alone considering the implications of market changes for programming. Through this pilot, the 
team hoped to develop a better understanding of how to analyze and interpret market 
monitoring data, which could then help them to propose and implement programmatic 
adaptations if warranted. 
Underlying theory of change of the piloted best practices 
Considering the above, the specific objectives of the pilot in Niger were to: 
1. Identify relevant non-price market monitoring indicators (in addition to the price data already 
being collected) that could be used to monitor current program appropriateness and enable IRC 
in Niger to inform future programming. 
2. Ensure future market monitoring is gender sensitive and adequately captures gender-specific data 
on trader and household access to and interaction with markets. 
3. Use the market monitoring findings to make adjustments to the program strategy when necessary. 
4. Use the market monitoring findings to better prepare for the response to the next disaster by 
collecting (non-price) data that has been identified as essential in humanitarian program design. 
5. Create a baseline of market data that can be used as reference for future market analyses, 
particularly when a disaster hits. 
16
Planned activities 
The pilot in Niger encompassed a kick-off workshop with primary objectives to a) identify in a 
participatory manner market monitoring indicators linked to upcoming programmatic decisions; b) 
create a questionnaire to collect market data to inform which of these could be gathered using 
CommCare. The intended outputs of the workshop were a finalized operational model and market 
monitoring framework along with mobile data collection tools. 
The intention was to implement two rounds of market data collection and analysis during the pilot, 
resulting in two market reports to be shared with the broader community of practice in country, 
including members of the Cash Alliance and the CWG. During the pilot kick-off, the Niger team 
developed a timeline of specific opportunities to use the market data to inform programming for 
different purposes, such as to ensure the relevance of the e-voucher modality and the value and 
frequency of distributions, and to propose appropriate cash disbursement modalities in future 
proposals. 
1.3.2. CRS Nigeria Country Office 
Context7
CRS began operations in Borno State in mid-2016, first providing emergency food, water and Non￾Food-Items (NFIs) via e-vouchers using private funds. As of January 2018, CRS in Nigeria was 
implementing a 22-month Food for Peace (FFP) project to support 11,396 households in Yobe and 
about 3,751 households in Borno State with food assistance using e-vouchers. The project delivers 
cash to vulnerable host and IDP households on a monthly basis, for a period of 12 months in Yobe and 
7 months in Borno. Market monitoring for this response is needed, as markets remain of critical 
importance in the target areas, where between 94% and 100% of host community members rely on 
them as their primary food source.8
 Furthermore, with the protracted conflict and insecurity in the 
Northeast, local marketing basins that were once largely surplus-producing are now deficit, relying on 
imports of supplies of major staples from neighbouring states and even from markets in northwest 
Nigeria.9
 The volatile exchange rate of the Nigerian Naira further exacerbates the precarious market 
situation, making market monitoring a critically important activity. 
Under this e-voucher program, CRS had been conducting market price monitoring monthly in order to 
identify and analyze trends related to market prices, and had been collecting some other relevant 
market data to ensure informed decision making in case of an abrupt rise/fall in the price of certain 
food items. 
Main barriers to market data uptake 
Staff inputs collected during the pilot kick-off workshop indicated that data for certain non-price 
indicators was being collected through PDMs, but in an inconsistent fashion. Furthermore, the data 
was collected only at the beneficiary, and not at trader level. Finally, some indicators were limited to 
food items, reducing the utility of the data for the Shelter or other NFI teams. As in Niger, there were 
also signs of the market monitoring activity being reporting-driven i.e. collecting data or selecting 
 
7
 From pilot implementation plan 
8
 CRS Sub-Grant Technical Narrative 
9
 CRS Sub-Grant Technical Narrative 
17
indicators mainly based on what was needed for donor reports rather than looking at its utility for 
making programmatic adaptations. 
Selected best practices for piloting 
CRS took the opportunity of its ongoing cash transfer programs as part of the FFP, OFDA and ECHO 
projects to undertake a pilot of market monitoring that goes beyond price-monitoring. The market 
monitoring was aimed to be integrated into CRS’ MARKit mentorship program, which had been 
initiated to assist participating country programs with the start-up and implementation of their price 
monitoring activities. Therefore, the team picked the following best practice: 
1. Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring 
This best practice intended to address the identified barriers to market data uptake. By setting up 
regular and comprehensive market monitoring rooted in programmatic decisions to be made, the 
team aimed to provide usable and useful information. Market data collection should take place as part 
of regular program activities and be tailored to data needed to inform programming. This best practice 
also included designing tools to support the translation of monitoring data into actions. 
Underlying theory of change of the piloted best practices 
The specific objectives for the pilot in Nigeria were the following: 
1. Identify relevant non-price market monitoring indicators (in addition to the price monitoring 
indicators) that can be used to monitor current program appropriateness and, enable CRS Nigeria 
to inform future programming. 
2. Ensure future market monitoring is gender sensitive and adequately captures the disaggregated 
access and interaction with markets of both traders and households. 
3. Use the market monitoring findings to make adjustments to the program strategy when necessary. 
4. Use the market monitoring findings to better prepare for the response to the next disaster by 
collecting (non-price) data that has been identified as essential in humanitarian program design. 
5. Have a baseline of market data that can be used as reference for future market analyses, 
particularly when a disaster hits. 
18
Planned activities 
The pilot in Nigeria started with a kick-off workshop which aimed to a) introduce the CRS team to the 
Best Practice project, b) identify non-price market monitoring indicators as part of the best practice 
implementation plan, c) develop the Nigeria pilot project’s implementation plan, determine the ways 
of working between the consultant and the country office team and confirm the pilot’s main point of 
contact, and d) ensure the country office team was comfortable with the pilot implementation plan 
and monitoring framework. 
CRS Nigeria aimed to carry out two rounds of market data collection and analysis as part of the pilot. 
Staff members identified potential application of the market monitoring data to be: a) for advocacy 
purposes, for example, following some analysis of price increases in Gubio, CRS and other agencies 
identified roadblocks and transportation delays as causing price inflations and informed NEMA10 to 
take corrective action, b) to enable triangulation of data to gain a better understanding of the context 
and, the frequency of data collection, and c) to check the relevance of the market monitoring indicators 
to all sectors – not just food security and livelihoods. 
 
10 National Emergency Management Authority 
19
1.3.3. Mercy Corps Uganda Country Office 
Context11
Mercy Corps Uganda’s programs focus on economic recovery and development, agriculture and food 
security, and emergency response for refugees. The pilot aimed to build on two existing Mercy Corps 
Uganda development programs: a) DYNAMIC program which aimed to reach 125,600 youth aged 15 
to 24 across 9 districts in northern Uganda, of which one is Lamwo District, to improve their 
engagement with markets and economic opportunities, and b) TRAIL program which aimed to reach 
60,000 smallholder farmers in 4 districts (including Lamwo) to improve access to inputs and services 
and high-value output markets for their crops, in partnership with GADC.12 An e-voucher pilot program 
was implemented in Lamwo as part of DYNAMIC, and Mercy Corps was considering scaling up the 
voucher program as part of its humanitarian response. Furthermore, the local district government, the 
GADC and Private Sector actors (such as the Acholi Private Sector Development company) are 
implementing a number of agricultural and employment creation (vocational training) programs and 
initiatives that could be harnessed within a humanitarian response. 
The Mercy Corps Uganda country program has made strong investments in using analysis of market 
systems to design and improve long-run market systems development programs, with the hope that 
this legacy can help inform better programming to address the influx of refugees from South Sudan. 
Main barriers to market data uptake 
Out of the three refugee settlements planned within the remote agricultural Palabek areas of Lamwo 
District, presently only one refugee settlement - Palabek Ogili - is being established, owing to ongoing 
land accession discussions. Since Palabek Ogili’s settlement was established in mid-April, only minimal 
humanitarian interventions have taken place, with emphasis placed on establishing vital initial 
infrastructure such as bore holes and latrines and in allocating refugees plots of land for housing and 
agriculture. Only a few humanitarian organizations are active in the camp (Oxfam, LWF, IRC, Ugandan 
Red Cross and CEVSI), and as such, scant information related to the humanitarian situation was 
available, with no assessments related to the needs of the refugee households or market systems for 
basic food items having taken place. 
Also, although the Mercy Corps’ Lamwo team had significant experience in market development, their 
lack of skills and knowledge of humanitarian programing were seen to potentially result in some 
activities and processes taking longer than ideal due to a desire to be more thorough and detailed. Of 
note, there was no existing collaboration or a collaboration platform between development, 
humanitarian and private sector actors to engage in market analysis. 
Selected best practices for piloting 
Given the pre-existing presence of development actions in the region, and faced with the need to 
respond to the newly unfolding refugee crisis, Mercy Corps found the inclusion of the following best 
practices to be strategic and timely, and hoped that they would allow their humanitarian programs 
staff to utilize resources efficiently by harnessing existing knowledge from the development sector: 
1. Humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis, to better understand 
baseline contexts and aggregated impact of the humanitarian response on markets, share 
 
11 From pilot implementation plan 
12 GADC, an entrepreneurial private sector buying company in Uganda 
20
information when emergencies occur and support the design of responses that take into 
consideration key aspects of the market system that could be addressed in a humanitarian 
response. 
2. Private sector or specialized service providers play an increased role in market assessments 
and monitoring. 
3. Data is collected from a range of market actors (including consumers) within the market 
system. 
These best practices were intended to address the identified barriers to market data uptake. Mercy 
Corps’ existing market systems development teams have skills in market analysis that could benefit 
the design and implementation of humanitarian response. Similarly, the development team could 
benefit from learning about the applicability of their market systems approach in emergency settings. 
When it comes to the outsourcing of market data collection, Mercy Corps Uganda aimed to actively 
engage market actors in the analysis of market data, to better access their opinions and triangulate 
them against other sources. The outsourcing could be limited to some specific market data, such as 
the price data. This best practice was expected to be incorporated into monitoring and evaluation 
systems for the humanitarian response.
The final best practice, on the collection of data from a wider range of market actors, was chosen 
because it was thought it would foster a more holistic understanding of the opportunities, strengths, 
weaknesses and threats within the system that may restrict vulnerable households from accessing the 
markets they need. Mercy Corps Uganda aimed to collect data from refugee and non-refugee 
households to better understand their market needs and preferences. Mercy Corps Uganda could 
incorporate this best practice into market and household needs assessments and monitoring and 
evaluation systems. It was envisioned that this activity might only be required for a few months, until 
the supply chains are well established, more integrated and competitive, responding to consumer 
demand.
Underlying theory of change of the piloted best practices 
With the above in mind, the specific objectives for the pilot were the following: 
1. To utilize development program market analysis to inform humanitarian programing. In doing so, 
the aim is to improve the potential positive impact of refugee response programs on the local 
economy by addressing challenges and opportunities within the market system in humanitarian 
program design. 
2. To identify and document methods to incorporate market actors (including consumers) in data 
collection and analysis. 
21
Planned activities 
The pilot in Uganda started with two workshops in country which aimed to a) introduce the team to 
the Best Practice project and to the pilots being implemented in Niger and Nigeria, b) discuss actual 
and planned humanitarian programs and come up with a long list of potential development data for 
further discussion, c) discuss ways in which Mercy Corps could utilize data from consumers to benefit 
program implementation, d) explore how to engage market actors in monitoring and analysis activities, 
e) develop the Uganda pilot project’s implementation plan and other guidance material, determine 
the ways of working between the consultant and the country office team and confirm the pilot’s main 
point of contact, and f) ensure the country office team was comfortable with the pilot implementation 
plan and monitoring framework to be used in their country. The workshops were attended by 
development and humanitarian teams, key local stakeholders and partners. 
The creation of a Market Development Technical Working Group was then envisioned as a means to 
secure collaboration on market analysis between humanitarian, development and private sector 
actors. The potential to use this group to undertake initial needs assessments and eventual monitoring 
was also considered in order to overcome the barrier of scant humanitarian market data. 
22
1.4. Evaluation goals, objectives and scope 
The main goal of this evaluation was to assess the extent to which the best practices tested in each of 
the three pilots contributed to the uptake13 of market information in programmatic decision-making. 
The evaluation looked at the pilots’ effectiveness, efficiency, and unintended effects, and attempted 
to draw out any other learning that could help to inform others interested in improving the uptake of 
market data. The specific objectives were to: 
 Assess the extent to which the piloted best practices had facilitated the uptake of market data. 
 Discuss the efficiency of the piloted best practices 
 Identify the blockers and enablers to the pilots’ implementation
The complete evaluation matrix is provided in Annex 9.2. 
Assessing effectiveness involved looking at the extent to which each pilot team achieved its specific 
objectives, planned activities, outputs and outcomes. Efficiency was initially to be assessed based on 
logs of cost and time spent on implementing the selected best practices in each pilot context. A cost 
and time log template was set up by the project team with advice from IRC’s Research Advisor. Each 
pilot team was expected to log the name, position, salary, number of hours spent and type of tasks 
carried out by each staff member for the pilot activities. This information was supposed to allow the 
evaluators to precisely calculate the cost and time effort entailed by the pilot. 
By determining whether the piloted practices represent an improvement over the current ways of 
working and thus whether they are worth replicating, this evaluation intends to inform future 
programming. It also provides recommendation on how to replicate those best practices. 
2. Methodology 
This evaluation methodology was designed in a participatory manner, gathering inputs from the 
project review group14 on the evaluation questions and matrix and with its foreseen involvement in 
the development of recommendations. The principal methods of enquiry were qualitative in nature, 
drawing on both primary and secondary data. The evaluation design was kept consistent (i.e. number 
of evaluation visit days, type of key informants interviewed, structure and nature of questions, etc.) 
across the three pilots to allow for maximum cross-project analysis where relevant. 
2.1. Data Collection 
The data collection phase occurred in country and remotely. The evaluator undertook week-long in￾country visits to pilot locations in Niger15 and Uganda (both in November 2017) and Nigeria (in 
December 2017). The following data collection methods were employed to gather information: 
 
13 For the purpose of this evaluation, “uptake” is understood as the use of market information to inform programming, i.e. 
that programming decisions consider market information when deciding to implement a change. 
14 The project review group comprised of the Consultancy Manager (Emily Sloane), IRC’s Research Advisor (Sana Khan), and 
the Technical Focal Points (Kassoum Ouattara, CRS and Alison Hemberger, Mercy Corps) 
15 Field visit in Niger was limited to the capital Niamey only. See Limitations for more details. 
23
 Desk review: the evaluator reviewed relevant project documents (implementation plans, 
timesheets, cost sheets, monitoring information, etc.) prior to field visits. 
 Survey: an online survey was administered using Survey Monkey to individuals involved in the 
gathering of market monitoring data in Nigeria and Niger only,16 as Uganda’s pilot did not look at 
market monitoring. The survey was implemented for a period of 14 days, from 7th to 20th
December 2017. It featured open and close-ended questions mainly through ranking on a forced 
Likert scale to capture responses on willingness of the pilot team members to conduct and 
continue the piloted best practices. A total of 20 respondents (15 from Niger and 5 from Nigeria) 
completed the survey. 
See Annex 9.5 for the survey questionnaire. 
 Key Informant Interviews (KIIs): A total of 34 interviews17 were conducted with 30 key informants. 
The key informants included staff involved with the pilot implementation, gathering and analysis 
of data and project decision-making and other relevant external in-country stakeholders who 
collaborated on the pilot (e.g. UNHCR in Uganda). The key informants were selected purposively 
to include people thought to be best able to provide the data needed to inform the evaluation. 
Interviews were semi-structured to allow for in-depth probing into the effectiveness and 
efficiency of the pilots as well as the potential for replicability and continuation of the best 
practice at the end of the project. See Annex 9.3 for the list of key informants interviewed per 
project, and Annex 9.5 for the interview guides. 
Remote interviews were also conducted with a panel of five industry experts18 to gather opinions 
and reflections on the cost-time efficiency, replicability and sustainability of the pilots being 
evaluated. 
All three pilots included components of collection and analysis of market data. These were initially 
planned to be completed before the evaluator’s field visit. Since the Niger and Uganda pilots had 
not completed analysis and reporting on the market data in time for the evaluator’s field visit, a 
second round of interviews was conducted remotely with the Pilot Focal Point and MEAL staff 
member for Niger and Uganda pilots after the in-country visit in end of December 2017. This 
second round was meant to further capture the intended use of the market data after their 
collection and analysis. 
 Field observations: These provided an additional way of capturing unforeseen findings during the 
week-long visit to each project site. The evaluator was able to observe market data collection in 
action in Uganda and visit marketplaces in both Nigeria and Uganda. Field observations enriched 
and contextualized the inputs from the key informants and helped ensure the relevance of the 
recommendations. 
Data collection occurred in English in Uganda and Nigeria, and in French in Niger. All documentation 
resulting from the evaluation was drafted in English. 
 
16 The survey targeted people involved in the market data gathering as a result of the pilot. 
17 Six, eight, and eleven key informants were interviewed during the field visits to Niger, Uganda and Nigeria respectively. 
Five remote interviews were also conducted with a panel of industry experts. 
18 The evaluator consulted Emily Sloane, Sana Khan, Alison Hemberger, Kassoum Ouattara, Helene Juillard and Lili Mohiddin 
to form a professional judgment on efficiency, sustainability and replicability of the pilots. 
24
2.2. Limitations 
The pilots were implemented in fast moving, emergency response settings. Despite the willingness of 
the chosen field teams to implement the pilot, competing project priorities and resource constraints 
(funding/time/staff) led to considerable delays in implementing activities across all pilots. In the case 
of Nigeria, the security context imposed further delays, affecting data collection and access to specific 
geographical areas and markets. This prevented the teams from realizing the full potential of the best 
practices. It also reinforces the importance of the factors outlined as essential pre-requisites for 
effective market analysis in the Best Practices Report i.e. adequate capacity, quality, resources and 
dissemination to receptive audiences.19
 
Furthermore, since time is inherent to any change process, it appears to be too early to see concrete 
evidence of the best practices’ actual effects in terms of how they affected programmatic adaptations, 
or the sustainability of the best practices. Yet, the evaluation does provide evidence of the practices’ 
potential to address the barriers to the uptake of market information. 
Some other limitations were: 
 Many pilot activities foreseen in the initial implementation plan were not completed in time for 
the evaluation visit. All three pilots were in different stages of the pilot during the evaluation, and 
none had completed reporting and dissemination of findings. Thus, the evaluation focused mainly 
on potential, not actual, application of the collected market data in current and future programs. 
 The field visit in Niger was limited only to the capital Niamey, and no visit was undertaken to the 
field locations where the pilot had been implemented, due to security reasons. Field team 
members with the most experience of market monitoring travelled to Niamey to serve as key 
informants. Thus, there was no opportunity to observe the studied marketplaces first-hand. 
 In Nigeria, the online survey could not be administered to all the team members involved in data 
collection. This was mainly because the pilot team hired enumerators on daily labor contracts 
who were not part of the permanent staff. Thus, it was difficult to reach them and obtain 
responses. 
 The cost and time efficiency analysis has been limited for Niger and Uganda, as the time logs were 
done in broad terms (i.e. # of days instead of # of hours), and it is difficult to delimit the proportion 
of daily hours spent specifically on the pilot activities. Cost logs for Niger and Uganda were not 
made available to the consultants to analyze. The table below indicates the data made available 
to the evaluator by each team. 
Table 1: Time and cost logs 
Pilot Site Time Logged? Costs Logged?
Nigeria Yes, up to Nov. 17 Yes
Uganda Yes, up to Oct. 17 No
Niger Yes, up to Sept. 17 No
 
19 BP Report. As further discussed in the findings section, many of these pre-requisites were missing, which appear to have 
hampered or blocked the best practices’ effects. 
25
Thus, overall the cost and time efficiency is mainly extrapolated from key informants’ self-reported 
efficiency of carrying out the pilot activities when compared to the usual cost and time they incur for 
a similar activity. Inputs from expert key informants have further enriched this section of the report. 
Finally, some activities implemented during the workshop that kick started the pilot went beyond the 
best practice itself (e.g. during the kick-off workshop in Niger, the team decided to reduce the number 
of commodities to monitor, although this activity was not an official part of the pilot). Hence it is 
difficult to attribute a gain in efficiency to the best practice itself, even though it can be attributed to 
the pilot. 
3. The effectiveness of the piloted practices 
This section first examines the effects the pilots had on creating an enabling environment for the 
uptake of market data. It then looks at the extent to which pilots have achieved their intended outputs 
and specific objectives. Thirdly, it assesses the actual and potential use of market data to inform 
programming before looking more specifically at the team acceptance. 
Each piloted practice intended to address the identified context-specific barriers to the uptake of 
market data as described above in Section 1.3.
20 Each practice also helped to foster an enabling 
environment for the further uptake of market data, as is further detailed in Section 3.1. This mainly 
consisted of increasing teams’ market sensitivity, showcasing the potential of the data to help inform 
adjustments to the assistance modality; mobilize engagement around market data and support 
advocacy for cash and market-based approaches. 
However, the intended results, and notably the use of market data to inform programming, have not 
been fully realized yet, as laid out in Sections 3.2 and 3.3. 
3.1. Creating an enabling environment for the 
uptake of market data 
All three pilots confirmed the importance of ensuring an enabling environment irrespective of the 
context for the best practice to harness positive outcomes. This environment is characterized by: 
adequate resources to collect and analyze market data, the capacity and awareness of the team on 
the added value of market data to improve programming, the quality of the market data collected so 
that it can be trusted and ultimately used, and finally, adequate dissemination of this collected data. 
The absence of some of these pre-requisites has hampered the effectiveness of the pilots, yet the 
progress made in establishing these pre-requisites as a result of the project make future use of market 
data more likely than before the pilot. The effects of the pilots are therefore expected to materialize 
over a longer period of time, once teams internalize the best practices and continue the activities in a 
consistent manner. 
 
20 In Niger and Nigeria, the prevalence of donor or reporting driven market analysis (rather than for program 
design/adaptation purposes); inconsistent frequency and scope of the exercise; and scant coverage of NFIs. While in Uganda, 
the unavailability of humanitarian market data and a lack of collaboration between humanitarian, development and private 
actors on market analysis were key impediments. 
26
Team capacity 
Across all three pilots, there was pre-existing knowledge of and experience with market and/or M&E. 
In both Niger and Nigeria, market monitoring was already being conducted, and all three countries 
were regularly conducting M&E. The pilots in Niger and Nigeria assumed a fully functioning price 
monitoring activity was in place. However, the Niger team experienced challenges and delays in 
conducting market monitoring as their price monitoring calendar was decided on an ad-hoc basis and 
depended on donor reporting timelines rather than a regularly scheduled programmatic activity. Each 
of the pilots also relied on agencies’ staff that were cash and market advisors or M&E advisors. 
All interviewed team members who participated in the pilot confirmed that they have developed their 
market skills over the pilot period and especially during the in-country kick-off workshops led by 
external market experts. They report that this in turn fostered a more market-sensitive mindset within 
the team and an increased willingness to use market data to adjust current programming and inform 
future proposals. This interest in using market data has, however, not yet been borne out in practice, 
which raises the question of whether the pilots would have been more effective had the chosen teams 
possessed the necessary capacity and knowledge at the outset. 
Adequate resources to collect market data 
Time, as well as adequate human and financial resources, are pivotal pre-requisites for market data to 
be used to inform programming, and this requires management buy-in. As part of the pilots, a small 
amount of dedicated financial resources was made available to each host country. Yet, considering the 
competing priorities of all humanitarian practitioners, some pilots struggled to make staff available for 
pilot activities. For example, in Nigeria, the MEAL staff were not available during the pilot kick-off 
workshop. 
However, overall, the management team’s commitment to the pilot’s success was an enabler to 
achieving results in Nigeria, despite the fact that the pilot there started more than two months after 
those in Uganda and Niger. Nigeria had a strong push from in-country and regional managers to 
conduct the activities and deliver results. This contributed to the effectiveness of the pilot in country, 
though it is probably unlikely that management will continue to promote the practice so strongly now 
that the pilot is over. 
By the end of the pilots, interviewed representatives from the management teams across all three 
countries expressed interest in using market data and a willingness to allocate necessary resources to 
do so in the future. This is again an encouraging signal that the pilots have managed to address some 
of the key barriers to the use of market data. 
Adequacy of market data 
Improving the intrinsic quality of the market data was not one of the intended results of the pilots, yet 
the pilots intended to make sure collected market data was fit for purpose. However, by the end of 
the project, decision-makers, mainly in Niger and Nigeria, reported some reluctance to trust and use 
the data due to quality and relevance issues. This is one of the apparent shortcomings of the pilot 
implementation, but it could be explained by several factors: a) the normal resistance to change from 
decision-makers, who hesitated to rely on a new data set to make decisions, b) the pilot period was 
insufficiently long for the team to go through several rounds of data collection and make necessary 
improvements in the collection, coding and analysis of the market data, and c) pilot implementation 
27
constraints. One example of such constraints is the absence of the MEAL team in Nigeria during the 
kick-off workshop, which led to a differing understandings of who qualifies to be a trader and the 
geographical scope of monitoring. 
Some key informants challenged the market monitoring indicators selected at the beginning of the 
pilot. For example, in Niger, KIs felt the indicator about the provenance of products was not granular 
enough, which limited its ability to provide important information in terms of supply routes and 
forecasted negative effects on the markets. This indicator was discussed during the kick-off workshop, 
but was ultimately not selected, as participants could not determine which programmatic decision it 
would inform. This demonstrates that market monitoring should remain agile to mirror the dynamic 
nature of markets and to adjust to the changing needs of the team. 
In Nigeria, the selected indicators were mainly was captured using closed quantitative questions to 
allow for efficient data collection. Yet interviewed team members would have been willing to add 
additional probing questions to grasp more details on the different market blockages (e.g. why are 
some traders not able to rapidly restock?). This is a very encouraging sign of a team moving from 
considering the use of market data to inform the choice of modality (i.e. can traders rapidly restock = 
is CTP an appropriate modality?) to using market data to design market support interventions (i.e. why 
can’t traders rapidly restock = what market support interventions are relevant?). 
Also encouraging is the interest in market data across sectors within the respective country teams. The 
WASH team in CRS Nigeria complained that market monitoring was not capturing key WASH 
commodities. As the pilot was hosted by the food security project, most of the monitored commodities 
were de facto food related. This cross sectoral interest should be encompassed by the teams in charge 
of market monitoring. This could present multiple advantages: a) resources to implement market 
monitoring could be pulled in, b) geographical scope of market monitoring could potentially increase 
if more team members were to contribute to it, and c) this could encourage multi-sectoral 
programming and the use of multi-purpose grants. 
Across the three pilot countries, the use of technology was flagged as a key element that improves 
data quality and consistency along with ensuring it is rapidly available for decision-making. The use of 
mobile data collection, when the market monitoring happens on a regular basis, should therefore be 
encouraged, provided that there is adequate set up time and training. 
Ultimately, the lack of quality control mechanisms in Niger and Nigeria reduced the trust the decision￾makers placed in the collected market data. 
Dissemination of the data 
The last key pre-requisite to the optimal use of market data is its adequate dissemination. In that 
regard, the Uganda pilot managed to convince several organizations to step outside their silos, shed 
reservations about funding competition and sit down together to share information for the benefit of 
the broader community. It took the pilot teams more time than anticipated to mobilize partners to 
attend workshops and get them to appreciate the value of sharing data. But the anticipated outcome 
of this strong engagement and dissemination across organizations is an increased use of market data. 
28
3.2. Achieving the intended results 
This section examines the achievement of the intended activities, outputs and outcomes as laid out in 
each respective Theory of Change, on a country-by-country basis. 
Niger 
Most of the pilot support activities (i.e. kick-off workshop, monitoring check-in calls and remote 
guidance by the consultants) took place during the course of the pilot. Yet the main activity - the actual 
collection and analysis of market data using the revised market indicators that go beyond price - had 
not been fully completed. This is mostly due to competing priorities within the team, along with the 
fact that the pilot had assumed a functioning, fairly regular market monitoring system, whereas in 
reality, monitoring was done on an ad-hoc basis. 
This has resulted in the majority of the intended outcomes being only partially fulfilled. The main gap 
lies in the lack of use of the market data to inform programming, as further developed in Section 3.3. 
Table 2: Activities and outputs’ status update for each pilot 
Activities Not achieved Partly achieved Fully achieved
Workshops and discussions to identify 
market monitoring indicators 
(frequency/ source/ methodology)
Staff training
3 day workshop 
organized in 
Niamey June 6th to 
8
th
Elaboration and finalization of
monitoring framework, guidance 
documents and data collection forms 
and operational model
Completed 2 weeks 
following the 
workshop
Monitoring and analysis activities First round of data 
collection done in August. 
But data has not been 
analyzed yet.
Remote support by the consultant
Outputs Not achieved Partly achieved Fully achieved
Implemented and documented pilot of 
the best practice
Monitoring check-in calls 
have been documented. 
However, only one of the 
two planned market 
monitoring reports have 
been drafted, and the 
monitoring framework has 
not been filled. Thus, the 
best practice has been 
partially implemented.
Staff with knowledge and experience in 
collecting and analyzing market 
indicators beyond price monitoring
Most of those who 
attended the workshop 
reported an increase in 
knowledge.
Mobile data collection tools and 
analysis reports set up and shared with 
program teams
Completed 2 weeks 
following the 
workshop
29
Finalized field visit report, operational 
model and monitoring framework
Completed 3 weeks 
following the 
workshop
 Looking at the pilot’s intended outcomes: 
o Improved staff capacity to undertake mobile market data monitoring and analysis 
All staff who attended the kick-off workshop reported having a better command of mobile 
data collection and market monitoring. However, the Niger pilot experience indicates that 
trainings at the regional or capital level can lose quality by the time they trickle down to staff 
at the field level. Thus, having the same training provided to all enumerators and regional and 
capital levels team members should be the preferred option (instead of ToTs), even if it is more 
costly. 
o Country team has a more holistic understanding of context 
Overall, there was a broad consensus among all KIs that the current set of indicators are 
adequate for their programmatic needs to complement the price data and provide a more 
holistic snapshot of the markets in which they operate. 
o Program modification on the basis of market monitoring information 
To date there is no example of market monitoring information influencing program design or 
adaptation. Yet key informants from both pilots felt that the indicators were relevant for 
improving future response preparedness. Informants were confident that market monitoring 
findings would help them know whether and how markets can support an emergency 
response and accordingly select a suitable aid modality very quickly. Furthermore, pilot teams 
flagged that market monitoring data could serve as a baseline for future market analyses. And 
if they succeed in conducting periodic market monitoring, then the same data could be used 
for future proposals to ECHO or Food for Peace (FFP) instead of launching separate market 
analyses. 
o Country team increases its profile by sharing monthly market monitoring updates with the 
clusters 
The country team has not shared monthly market monitoring updates yet, hence this outcome 
has not been achieved. 
Nigeria
The Nigeria pilot team accomplished its goal of identifying non-price market monitoring indicators,21
which were reported by informants to be relevant. However, there is still no evidence of how the data 
these indicators provide feeds into programming. The pilot also successfully utilized a gender lens 
while designing and planning the pilot activities. However, in practice, the gender sensitivity of this 
pilot was not fully realized. For instance, vendors were not profiled by gender. 
This pilot succeeded in making teams feel better prepared for a future response, although actual 
preparedness will depend on how quickly teams are able to learn lessons from the pilot experience 
and improve their monitoring activity to obtain reliable data. In a way, actual contribution towards 
emergency preparedness of the piloted best practices can only be assessed once the teams engage in 
another wave of emergency response. 
 
21 Based on follow-up reports compiled post external experts’ field visits, as well as KIs.
30
Activities Not achieved Partly achieved Fully achieved
Workshops and discussions to identify 
market monitoring indicators 
(frequency/ source/ methodology)
Staff training
3-day workshop 
organized in 
Maiduguri Sept 19th
to 21st
Elaboration and finalization of
monitoring framework, guidance 
documents and data collection forms 
and operational model
Completed 2 weeks 
following the 
workshop
CRS Monitoring and analysis activities First round of data 
collection done in 
November. Data has been
analyzed and compiled 
into a draft report. The 
second round of data 
collection has not been 
carried out.
Remote support by the consultant
Outputs Not achieved Partly achieved Fully achieved
Implemented and documented best 
practice (such as through notes 
captured from monitoring check-in 
calls, filled in monitoring framework 
and market monitoring reports)
Monitoring check-in calls 
have been documented. 
However, only one of the 
two planned market 
monitoring reports has
been drafted, and the 
monitoring framework has 
not been filled. Thus, the 
best practice has been 
partially implemented.
Staff with knowledge and experience 
in collecting and analyzing market 
indicators beyond price monitoring
Most of those who 
attended the workshop 
reported an increase in 
knowledge.
Mobile data collection tools and 
analysis reports set up and shared 
with program teams
Completed 2 weeks 
following the 
workshop
Finalized field visit report, operational 
model and monitoring framework
Completed 2 weeks 
following the 
workshop
 Looking at the pilot’s intended outcomes: 
o Improved staff capacity to undertake mobile market data monitoring and analysis 
All staff who attended the kick-off workshop reported having a better command of mobile 
data collection and market monitoring. Project managers reported that their teams have 
increased knowledge of market based programming. Of note, non-food sector managers such 
as WASH, NFIs and Livelihoods, as well as support staff (Admin and Logistics), recognized that 
they had an improved understanding of how they can contribute to and benefit from a more 
comprehensive market monitoring activity. The M&E team, however, acknowledged the 
missed opportunity to improve capacities, as they were unable to assist the initial kick-off 
workshops, which could have helped avert errors in data analysis and produce better quality, 
more reliable results. 
31
o Country team has a more holistic understanding of context 
The more comprehensive market monitoring piloted was a promising start for the pilot team 
to obtain more qualitative information about the markets in which they operate. Information 
on the quality and quantity of products, restocking time and provenance veritably helped the 
pilot team better understand their market systems. However, the team felt that conducting 
the activity in markets in a wider geographic area will be important to gain an even more 
holistic understanding of the broader regional context. 
o Program modification on the basis of market monitoring information 
In the case of the pilot in Nigeria, there is no example of market monitoring information 
influencing program design, as most key informants felt that it was too early to clearly see how 
the teams will use the market data. However, an informant noted how market monitoring 
could provide information to identify entry points for market-oriented programs. For example, 
data on vendors’ business growth could potentially help identify an entry point for a livelihood 
development project that aims to provide inputs to farmers. Some other informants felt that 
market data could be used to show that markets are functional and accessible, and encourage 
donors to support cash based responses within the broader response strategy of the agency. 
Uganda 
The pilot experience in Uganda revealed that while there is scope for using development market 
analysis to inform humanitarian programming, a critical first step is to ensure all actors are ready to 
collaborate and possess adequate knowledge on market based approaches. The pilot was able to 
establish such collaboration, however the objective of leveraging development market data to inform 
humanitarian programming was not fully implemented. The creation of a Market Development 
Working Group was a considerable achievement which helped provide a platform for collaboration 
and knowledge sharing among actors. It also enabled the launch of a joint market assessment under 
the stewardship of Mercy Corps. Finally, the Uganda pilot successfully consulted with a variety of 
market actors, including from the private sector, although it is too early to say whether or how these 
opinions will translate into program design. 
Activities Not achieved Partly achieved Fully achieved
Workshops and discussions to 
launch the collaboration between 
long term/humanitarian team
2-day workshop 
organized in Lamwo 
May 24th and 25th
Elaboration and finalization of
monitoring framework, guidance 
documents and data collection 
forms and operational model
Completed 2 weeks 
following the 
workshop
Ongoing monitoring and remote 
support by consultant
Outputs Not achieved Partly achieved Fully achieved
Implemented and documented 
best practice (such as through 
notes captured from monitoring 
check-in calls, filled in monitoring 
framework and market analysis 
reports)
Monitoring check-in calls
have been documented. 
However, the monitoring 
framework has not been 
completed, and no 
reporting on any market 
data collection is available. 
Thus, the best practice has 
32
been partially 
implemented.
Staff with knowledge and 
experience in collecting and 
analyzing market indicators 
beyond price monitoring
Most workshop attendees
reported an increase in 
knowledge
Development program with 
humanitarian activities
There were no such 
ongoing programs, 
and no development 
programs were 
adapted to include
humanitarian 
activities.
Monitoring system includes 
market actors
A joint market 
assessment was 
planned which also 
saw consultation 
with traders, output 
and input dealers 
and retailers 
Finalized field visit report, 
operational model and 
monitoring framework
Completed 1 week 
following the 
workshop
 Looking at the pilot intended outcomes: 
o Refugee households engaged in humanitarian responses linked to development programs 
The pilot witnessed consultations with refugee households as part of a joint market 
assessment. However, it was too early to see whether a development program would be 
adapted to include a humanitarian response component. One informant reported that the 
results from the market assessment were intended to be used to advocate for the inclusion of 
refugee households, in addition to host community households, in an ongoing development 
project. 
o Improved staff capacity and knowledge of development and humanitarian information needs 
Informants considered the pilot an opportunity to build a foundation for collaboration 
between development and humanitarian actors to conduct combined market analysis. The 
discussions that happened as part of the collaboration helped the involved agencies improve 
their knowledge of market based approaches and explore the potential to include them in 
future programming strategies. Furthermore, the creation of a market Development Working 
Group brought various actors closer and enabled knowledge sharing. Development market 
actors familiarized themselves with humanitarian approaches while humanitarian actors were 
able to assess their response strategy with a market lens. 
o Market analysis, program design and implementation is complemented by market actor 
opinion 
The Uganda pilot successfully involved male and female consumers through a joint market 
assessment, in addition to traders. FGDs were the main method of engaging with consumers 
(both host community and refugee consumers), while traders were reached through individual 
interviews. The private sector also participated, albeit in a limited fashion, to conceptualizing 
and designing the assessment. A validation workshop was planned to collectively interpret 
33
results of the market data collection exercise, which ultimately did not take place due to timing 
issues. Thus, while it was too early to see whether opinions of various market actors were 
ultimately taken into account for project design and implementation, the collaboration during 
the market analysis stage is promising. 
3.3. How market data has been used to inform 
programming 
As mentioned, the extent to which market data has been used to inform programming within the 
pilots’ life span has been limited. Pilot teams in Niger and Nigeria largely thought it was premature to 
predict how the pilot could help adjust ongoing or future projects before the monitoring exercises’ 
findings are shared. Yet they shared several intended uses during the evaluation. 
Globally, most KIIs thought mainly of how market data could be used to inform emergency response 
as opposed to informing contingency plans or supporting markets pre-crisis. This indicates that there 
remains scope for building the knowledge on market-based approaches of the pilot teams so that 
managers and decision-makers are able to use data in more varied ways.22
Table 3 Programmatic decisions informed by market data 
Using market data to 
choose the best 
assistance modality
ACTUAL: In Uganda, the pilot team utilized the market data 
collected to develop an emergency response proposal utilizing cash 
transfers. It further used it to successfully convince a traditionally in￾kind development donor to switch to a cash modality for the 
majority of the assistance.
EXPECTED: KIs in all three pilot sites noted that continuing the 
piloted best practices will help them make decisions more rapidly,
mainly in terms of choosing between cash, voucher or in-kind 
modalities for their respective contexts. 
Monitoring the 
appropriateness of 
the response
EXPECTED: All three pilots anticipate the data would help ensure 
continued appropriateness of their programs by indicating whether 
the transfer modality was appropriate and whether the transfer 
value was helping beneficiaries meet needs as expected. 
The Niger and Nigeria pilot teams expect the market data will help 
identify which vendors and commodities could be included in their 
e-voucher scheme. CRS Nigeria further aims to use the findings to 
improve the diversity of products available to beneficiaries through 
CRS vetted vendors. Knowing how frequently vendors are 
restocking, for instance, can help project managers organize a 
distribution schedule that causes minimal disruption to the usual 
market activity. For hygiene promotion teams, it was helpful to have 
 
22 Please refer to “Section B. Define what humanitarian market analysis can be used for” for a list of potential uses of 
market data. Juillard, Mohiddin and Weiss (5 April 2017) “Improving the Uptake of Humanitarian Market Analysis - Best 
Practices Report”. IRC.
34
a snapshot of the availability of hygiene products, quality and 
provenance without needing to perform a parallel monitoring 
activity by their own teams.
Supporting the 
markets
EXPECTED: KIs from Nigeria and Uganda made some important 
observations about using market data to directly or indirectly build 
capacities of the markets in which they intervene. For instance, 
market data on availability of items could help agencies inform
traders in advance to bulk up on certain food or NFI stocks in light 
of a new displacement wave. In Uganda, KIs remarked how the local 
markets heavily depended on regional markets and there was 
almost no presence of local players. The team envisaged using the 
market assessment findings to engage with the private sector,
especially input dealers, to convince them to supply agricultural 
inputs to the refugees. Based on the pilot market data, private 
sector KIs said they could consider pre-financing local players so that 
they could take more of the ownership of markets. In Nigeria, CRS 
was hopeful that the market monitoring activity would lead to non￾CRS vendors becoming more aware of CRS vendor qualification 
benchmarks so that more traders improve their market practices in 
order to qualify.
KIs from Uganda mentioned how they expect the market data to 
help address challenges and increase production and productivity. 
It could help the teams to provide appropriate agricultural inputs, 
and transfer knowledge on harvest and post-harvest handling to 
enable beneficiaries to produce a commercially viable product ready 
for markets. A KII with a private sector input dealer further revealed
that this would help reduce the prevalence of middle men who 
currently act as informal output dealers and continue to reduce 
confidence of serious investors in the region.
In addition to the above-mentioned programmatic decisions, interviewees highlighted other intended 
uses of the market data: 
 Informing long term livelihood programs: In Uganda, the Mercy Corps pilot team, traditionally 
involved in development programming, planned to use the market data to identify critical 
value chains, seed types and farming strategies to implement as the region gears up to respond 
to an influx of South Sudanese refugees. For instance, if the market data indicates a certain 
area will have a low potato production, the pilot team can accordingly roll out a technique 
suitable for increasing production. They also planned to use findings about prevalent labor 
skills in the affected populations to understand which skills are more appealing and in demand 
to inform their vocational training projects. 
 Facilitate operation’s work: market data could help admin staff perform due diligence before 
going to the field and vetting qualified vendors. This in turn could help considerably reduce 
fraud and monitor performance of qualified vendors. Logistics staff, who often double up as 
35
security management staff, mentioned that certain market monitoring indicators such as 
access to markets could also feed into their security assessments. If the monitored items’ list 
is expanded to include fuel or car hire prices, fleet management staff could use the data to re￾negotiate contracts of vehicle hire for the agency. 
 Raising their organizational profile by developing improved reports to donors that include 
market data. 
3.4. Team Acceptance 
Globally, the team acceptance (i.e. the willingness of the pilot team members to conduct and continue 
the piloted best practices) was a singular success across all pilots. Pilot team members, including those 
involved in managing and conducting the data collection, displayed a high level of acceptance and 
keenness for the best practices. Data collection staff credited the pilot with increasing their market 
sensitivity, while managers (in Niger and Nigeria) confirmed seeing a marked change in the seriousness 
with which the field teams approached the activity after the pilot began. A brief interaction with data 
collectors engaged in implementing the pilot market assessment in Uganda revealed similar trends. 
Data collectors were confidently able to explain the significance of the data they were collecting to 
inform future humanitarian programming as the refugee influx in the region continues. 
Technology was also a key factor for team acceptance. Niger field teams were particularly more 
motivated to conduct the more comprehensive piloted market monitoring as a cumbersome Kobo￾based questionnaire was replaced with a more streamlined, fit-for-purpose CommCare tool. The new 
tool offered significantly more flexibility to record information, which allowed teams to be agile and 
quickly deploy to a market, record data and exit without disrupting a vendor’s business.
The online survey produced promising results and confirmed that data collectors at the field level had 
a positive view of the pilot activities. 
“Before the pilot, I used to find the market monitoring activity very tiring, but now, if 
you tell me to go do the monitoring every week with CommCare, I am ready!” - KI from 
Niger involved in data collection as part of the pilot
36
Graph 1: Responses by data collection team members in Niger and Nigeria to online survey 23
When asked about the user-friendliness of piloted best practices, the pilot teams in Niger and Nigeria 
largely found the best practices easy to integrate. The Uganda team accepted that their chosen best 
practice had entailed a lot more effort than expected, but were satisfied with the significant results it 
had produced. The immense time investment to garner buy-in from partner agencies in the Uganda 
case demonstrates that teams can be fatigued if best practice pre-requisites are absent or if the time 
is too short to implement an effort-intensive activity. This can directly impact the team’s acceptance 
of the best practices. Other factors that contributed to the user-friendliness of the pilots was reported 
by KIs to be the use of technology, training workshop led by external experts and not needing to hire 
additional staff. 
4. Pilot efficiency 
An important element of the pilots’ replicability and sustainability is about the additional resources 
(financial and time related) needed for integrating the pilot activities into the ongoing activities and 
how those compared with other market assessment and monitoring. The efficiency of the pilots was 
intended to be measured through time and cost logs to be kept by each pilot team (more information 
in Evaluation Scope). Since these logs were not always completed, or were filled out but in an 
inconsistent fashion (more information in Limitations), there was very limited potential to conduct a 
precise time-cost comparison. Thus, the findings in this section are kept broad, and rely on inputs from 
sector experts as well as key informants to try and identify drivers of cost and time efficiency instead 
of quantifying the effort required to implement the best practices. 
 
23 N=20, 5 from Nigeria and 15 from Niger. Data was not disaggregated because Nigeria only had 5 responses, and both 
countries’ results demonstrated similar trends.
4
4
15
13 2
1
1
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
I am able to collect market information quicker than
before the pilot.
I can upload the market information quicker than
before.
6
7
4
14
12
15
1
1
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
The quality of the market information is better than
before.
I understand why we collect market information
better than before.
I have easily incorporated the new market
monitoring into my regular market monitoring
activities.
Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree Not Applicable
37
Looking across the three pilots, it is clear that different best practices incur varying levels of effort. 
Some, such as “humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis” may be more 
ambitious and difficult to establish, yet they can potentially offer benefits that go beyond the use of 
market data. As a result, the perception of efficiency, both in terms of cost and time, largely varied 
from one interviewed expert to another between those who viewed experimental learning-focused 
pilot activities as good value for money, while others thought the inefficiencies risked impeding uptake 
and the continuation of the piloted activities. In any case, across all pilots, the absence of certain pre￾requisites led to a decrease in efficiency and the need to dedicate more resources to meet those 
before being able to focus on the best practice itself. 
The pilot teams more globally agreed that the potential benefits of the pilots far outweighed the costs. 
In addition, it is more than likely that pilot activities will become easier and cheaper to implement once 
they are institutionalized. It seems that not needing to hire external staff was the biggest contributor 
to the cost efficiency. While Niger and Nigeria used their regular staff to conduct the pilots, the Uganda 
pilot benefitted from partner agencies’ staff that helped conduct the pilot activities. 
The use of technology has also been highlighted as a key driver of cost efficiency, especially in Niger 
and Nigeria. However, this use of this technology incurred heavy costs: enumerators needed to be 
provided with newly-purchased tablets, and an in-house expert was flown in Niger to create the data 
collection application and dashboard on CommCare and train the team on its usage. These costs, 
combined with the lack of uptake of the database and errors found in data collection, despite the easy￾to-use software, signal two important caveats. Technology can contribute to efficiency only if it is 
used sustainably and if the teams are experienced and capable of using it. 
The pilot in Nigeria demonstrated this assumption. Nigeria teams, accustomed to Kobo, used the same 
software for the pilot. Based on KI reports, the absence of significant errors in data input and lack of a 
significant increase in time spent on data cleaning before and after the pilot potentially indicates the 
efficient use of technology.24
 
In Niger, the interviewed team members perceived the pilot to be efficient due to an improved 
structure of their market monitoring questionnaire: the team was able to collect more information, 
interview more traders and cut down the average interview duration significantly. The mock data 
collection exercise implemented as part of the external expert-led workshop indicated that the survey 
takes 10-15 minutes per vendor. This was considered as a significant improvement from before the 
pilot, although pre-pilot time costs are not available to make an exact comparison. The structure of 
the pre-pilot tool did not allow data collectors to interview only one vendor at a time; instead they 
switched between multiple vendors in order of the commodities stated in the tool. Overall, looking at 
the time spent on market monitoring, too many changes happen at the time of the pilot, to be able to 
attribute those solely to the best practices piloted. First, the number of commodities to monitor was 
 
24 Data quality issues in the Nigeria pilot stemmed from a weak methodology and lack of definitions which led to inaccurate 
data being collected. However, the collected data did not seem to suffer from significantly more input errors or missing 
values compared to usual activities. 
“Technology leads to efficiency if used in a sustainable manner. If used for one round, it can 
turn out too costly. But if it is used for, say 10 rounds, then you can have more cost 
efficiency,” Sana Khan, IRC Research Advisor
38
reduced from 50 to 18, which drastically reduced resources needed for the data collection. However, 
at the same time, Save the Children, which had been collecting market data and sharing it with IRC, 
stopped doing so. That meant that the IRC had to expend the geographical scope of its market 
monitoring, thus increasing the resources needed. 
Nigeria has achieved the most in the shortest period of implementation (3 months as compared to 6 
months for Niger and Uganda), yet, interviewees in Nigeria had divergent opinions on efficiency. Some 
felt the activity had good value for time spent, while others indicate concerns for the sustainability of 
such activities when other priority activities come up. Time spent (approx. 100-120 hours) on data 
collection as part of the pilot is quite intensive when compared to a regular market monitoring activity. 
This may be due to the fact that the methodology did not specify who was a trader, which resulted in 
monitoring data counting too many small players and having a count of over 1,000 traders. 
5.Unintended effects of the pilots 
The pilots did not seem to have experienced any critical negative unintended effects, as confirmed by 
most key informants. The only recurrent negative effect that the Niger and Nigeria teams experienced 
was antagonizing vendors who were not part of their voucher programs, who expected incentives in 
return for participating in the monitoring activity. Both teams experienced this problem, and the 
evaluation visit served as a moment to reflect and consider mitigation measures. This is a challenge, 
as best practices related to monitoring and evaluation promote the inclusion of non-participating 
markets and traders to obtain a comparative analysis. Mitigation actions included interviewing new 
non-qualified vendors in each round, communicating the wider benefit the market stood to gain from 
the activity and distributing informational documents on vendor qualification criteria. 
The main unintended effect of the pilots was the creation of an enabling environment to further 
encourage the uptake of market data. Having sufficient capacity within the team to understand 
markets or to be able to dedicate resources to collect and analyze market data have always been part 
of the pilots’ logic. However, the primary strategy was to implement the pilots in country offices which 
already possessed this enabling environment, so the pilots could focus on the implementation of the 
best practice itself. Yet, because it is unlikely that most of the humanitarian settings would provide the 
perfect enabling environment, the implementation of the best practice has had positive effects beyond 
its boundaries by creating an overall “market friendly” environment. 
There were also a few unintended effects of the pilots as reported or observed by KIs. These are 
presented below, as they were specific to the contexts of the pilots and cannot be generalized. 
In Niger: 
 The pilot team was able to convince senior management to allocate budget for software or 
tablets for enumerators. This in turn allowed them to have an agency email ID as an official 
communication channel, which interestingly helped enumerators integrate within the team 
and take their roles more seriously. 
 The pilot team has hopes that the other program teams such as the Protection team will 
adopt similar tablet-based monitoring methods to do case management and follow up. 
39
 The quality and time of archiving data improved due to the automatic database integration 
of monitoring data collected in each new round. Prior to the pilot, the teams were collating 
paper based forms or maintaining separate spreadsheets for each round. 
 The more comprehensive market monitoring helps teams look at prices on a more granular 
level, i.e. per market, whereas they could only look at price averages for markets of the entire 
region prior to the pilot. 
In Uganda: 
 NGOs, as well as OPM25 and UNHCR, the main refugee response coordination bodies, view the 
private sector actors such as GADC26 (input and output dealers) as serious actors for 
collaboration on market-based programming. 
 For Mercy Corps, the pilot helped the organization gain credibility among humanitarian 
organizations during meetings, as participants became aware of their capacity and 
specialization in market system approaches. 
 The collaborative spirit induced by the pilot has greatly facilitated the implementation of 
another new collaborative multi-sector needs assessment. This assessment will include data 
that will complement analysis from the piloted market assessment. 
 The workshops held as part of the pilot also helped the teams realize the lack of market 
analysis and understanding of the value of market analysis. As a result, the teams held 
targeted awareness raising sessions in which the value of market data was discussed as well 
as trainings. 
 KIs reported that organizations usually tend to rush directly to performing an assessment, 
without spending adequate time planning and holding conceptualizing discussions. In their 
view, the pilot helped start a discussion at the strategic and planning levels to make sure the 
assessment was undertaken correctly an in consultation with relevant actors. 
 The pilot team members, who have development backgrounds, were able to learn about 
humanitarian approaches for markets. Thus, they are capable of contributing in the event of 
a humanitarian crisis. 
In Nigeria: 
 The pilot team plans to share the market monitoring findings with the Cash Working Group 
and use them as for advocacy with donors and state agencies. Information on access and 
supply chains is expected to help UN agencies and other NGOs resolve critical bottlenecks. 
 Similarly to Niger, the Nigeria pilot team was also encouraged to see a separate budget line 
created for the activity at the HQ level, which confirmed senior management interest in 
supporting such experimental activities. 
 When the project started, the pilot team’s mindset was very emergency response-oriented, 
but now the pilot has helped them think about adopting a market development approach. 
 
25 OPM is Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda, the main state agency in charge of handling refugee affairs.
26 Gulu Agricultural Development Company in Uganda is a company that trains and connects farmers to markets. 
40
6. Lessons learned 
1. Key to ensuring that market data is used to inform programing is the identification of program 
decisions that require market data. In doing so, teams can better understand what data needs 
to be analyzed, by when, how frequently and by using which data collection tools. This 
approach could help teams manage their data collection processes and reduce the collection 
of non-utilized data. To do so, the pilots in Niger and Nigeria used the Market Information 
Framework the IRC developed under the same umbrella project. The framework, and 
especially the Excel table that maps the type of market data to collect for each programmatic 
decision, was described as “easy to use but difficult to read”. The length of the table could 
indeed be intimidating at first glance, and it required in both Niger and Nigeria a preliminary 
introduction from the market expert for the team to feel confident enough to use it. 
2. To be used, market data should be collected regularly, which requires the ambitions to be 
matched with the available resources and with the intended programmatic decisions. Even by 
the end of the pilots, the distinction between was is needed to make decisions versus what 
would be nice to know for an improved understanding of the local economies was sometimes 
difficult to make. 
3. The presence of pre-requisites (i.e. an enabling environment) is vital to the successful 
implementation of best practices. This seems to be due to the pre-requisites indicating a level 
of institutionalization of market analysis. Essentially, lack of institutional interest in market 
analysis significantly effects the uptake of market analysis. 
4. Successful best practice implementation requires staff who are able to ‘think outside of the 
box’ and take risks, as the best practices often require a slight deviation from what can be 
known as ‘normal practice’. What is needed now is for best practice methods to become 
‘normal practice’. 
5. Despite the fact that the required pre-requisites are the same across best practices, the level 
of organizational investment required by agencies to ensure the inclusion of the pre-requisites 
and comparative importance of each pre-requisite will always be context and best practice 
specific. Organizations should consider applying a market analysis-adapted version of the 
Organizational Readiness Tool for cash transfer approaches to ensure their capacity and ability 
to achieve the implementation of best practices. Certain best practices, such as the one aiming 
for collaborative market analysis implemented in Uganda, are more effort intensive then 
others but can also harness bigger outcomes. When deciding which best practices to 
implement, organizations should consider the level of impact, and not only the level of effort 
that its team at-large wants to have. This should allow to match available resources with 
ambitions. 
6. Clear scoping of the different market stakeholders and of the market places is key to make 
sure market data collection does not become too cumbersome. This may require the 
formalization of a 2-3 paged Market Data collection protocol to ensure market data is collected 
and analyzed with the appropriate scope, disaggregation and consistency. 
Lessons learned specific to market monitoring: 
1. To ensure market monitoring is being used to inform programming, there should be a 
functioning monitoring system. To be consistent and successful, market monitoring should be 
integrated in this regular monitoring and not be considered as a separate activity. 
41
2. Market monitoring should remain agile to mirror the objectives of the program, the modalities 
implemented within the program, the dynamic nature of markets and the changing needs of 
the team. Market monitoring indicators should be traced back to programmatic decisions to 
be made. It is normal that those decisions, and as a result, the related indicators to monitor, 
evolve over time based on the changes in context, team market sensitivity or donor priorities. 
3. Advice regarding which non-price indicators to include in monitoring systems should consider 
program objective and modality(ies) applied, as market based programs encompass a range 
of interventions that either use, support or facilitate market change considering dynamics of 
supply and demand, the market environment and market infrastructure. On the basis of the 
pilots, the implementation of cash-based interventions to meet displaced households’ basic 
needs should consider including non-price indicators related to trader number and size as well 
as the range of goods and services available at visited retailers. 
Lessons learned specific to collaboration between humanitarian and development actors 
1. Detailed mapping of key humanitarian, development and private sector agents prior to 
collaborative meetings provides a valuable insight into which actors to include in preliminary 
meetings. As Mercy Corps were well acquainted with key actors in the implementation area, 
they were in the advantageous position to quickly identify relevant actors. 
2. Collaborative meetings could be phased, with fewer participants each time as relationships 
and opportunities between stakeholders are discussed and assessed. Using such an approach 
could help agencies to identify with better precision key collaboration actors, areas of synergy 
and mutual interest. 
3. Effective collaboration between humanitarian and development actors requires a facilitator 
with knowledge and work experience in both sectors. This is due to differences in language, 
implementation methodology and timeframes and, partnership perspectives. Having an 
understanding of both approaches can help to enhance collaboration and reduce any 
frustrations that may emerge. 
7. Potential for sustainability and replicability 
7.1. Sustainability 
As only six months has passed since the start of the first pilot, it is too early to determine if the practices 
will be sustained, and thus this evaluation focuses on the potential for sustainability. Across the three 
pilots, KIs on the whole seemed quite positive when asked about the prospects of sustainability for the 
best practices they piloted. However, many noted that while the pilot experience has garnered a strong 
level of acceptance among teams, there are certain factors that will ultimately determine the 
continuity (and replicability) of the pilots. The two most important factors are the adequacy of 
resources (time, funds, staff and capacity), and notable improvements in the quality and frequency of 
market analysis. Other factors include integrating the activity on a systemic level, communicating the 
results and garnering management and donor support. These are also essential, but not necessarily 
sufficient, conditions to ensure continuity. 
Certain pre-requisites of funding, time, staff and technical knowledge need to be fulfilled: What the 
pilots do confirm, repeatedly, are that the pre-requisites of staff, time, funding, subject expertise and 
42
senior management support are essential for ensuring the successful implementation of the best 
practices. All pilots demonstrated that these conditions are essential, albeit to varying degrees. Nigeria 
KIs were positive about the continuation the pilot activity, as they believed they have the 
infrastructure, know-how, personnel and management support. Niger, on the other hand, will most 
likely find it challenging to sustain market monitoring if they continue to have their monitoring 
schedule be ad-hoc and donor-driven instead of a regularly scheduled activity. In general, given that 
this was the first attempt at conducting the pilots, the teams’ efforts have been worthwhile, especially 
due to the pilots’ value as a learning opportunity and their role in demonstrating the usefulness of 
market data to senior management. 
Improving quality and frequency of data collection is key: As identified in the Best Practices Report, 
uptake of data is indeed dependent on the quality of analysis as well as its timeliness. Niger, for 
instance, recognized that there is a need to improve the quality of data collected to increase its 
usability. They aim to conduct refresher trainings for enumerators and fine-tune their monitoring tool 
to obtain better quality data. This is expected to enhance the project’s sustainability because it will 
increase the likelihood of using the collected data in the future to inform programming. Both Niger 
and Nigeria were largely content with the indicators they have chosen to follow and seem convinced 
about the benefits of monitoring non-price indicators. However, Nigeria is looking at revising certain 
ones such as sourcing, accessibility and supply chain mapping and monitoring them less frequently to 
make the activity more light-touch. The team expects this exercise to make the activity more likely to 
be sustained. They also found it important to discuss monitoring findings on a regular basis to increase 
the likelihood that they will actually be used. This is a promising indication of increased ownership and 
leadership of the monitoring activity to their programs. 
The use of market data should be considered a routine activity and not a pilot one: The Niger pilot 
team felt that integrating the non-price indicators within their regular price monitoring rounds would 
help them sustain the activity, while in Uganda, the KIs thought the working group could be critical to 
ensure continuation. KIs in Uganda felt that partners need to be given more roles especially as new 
agencies joined the table, and that clearly defined roles and responsibilities would ensure continued 
participation at an agency level, irrespective of staff turnover. The ongoing practice of presenting 
highlights from the market development working group in its parent cluster of Livelihoods was thought 
to further contribute to sustainability of the momentum set forth by the pilot. 
Garnering buy-in: buy-in and support from donors to report on market data and utilize it as evidence 
to justify proposals is highly likely to encourage agencies to sustain the identified best practices. 
7.2. Replicability 
In each of the three country contexts, the pilots have given valuable results, be it an improved agile 
monitoring tool or more evidence for advocacy of cash and market based approaches. Furthermore, 
the very high team acceptance indicates an interest to implement these best practices despite the 
additional effort they incur. The best practices are a very flexible array of solutions in that they offer 
something of value corresponding to the extent of resources, time and skills a team might have – from 
something less resource-intensive, such as inclusion of non-price indicators in an existing monitoring 
activity, to larger efforts such as setting up collaboration between development and humanitarian 
43
actors. Thus, given the generally high team acceptance of the best practices and the assured benefits 
they offer, it is worthwhile to replicate these best practices in more contexts, teams and programs. 
The ultimate goal of any pilot is for the identified best practices and effective approaches to be 
replicated until there is sufficient ‘proof of concept’ that they are seen fit for scale up. Despite the 
short implementation timeframe for these pilots, thereby affecting a resounding ‘proof of concept’, 
the best practices piloted could be replicated, so long as the vital pre-requisites are in place and it is 
within the institutional interest to ensure success. If prior to the best practice implementation, there 
is not a conducive environment (i.e. the pre-requisites are not met) then it seems that any of the best 
practices would have the potential to foster the development of this conducive environment. 
The identified best practices occurred in a range of contexts and seem to be applicable across a range 
of contexts, rapid onset disasters, protracted refugee contexts and complex emergencies. The best 
practices apply within humanitarian agencies but also speak to development actors who may find 
themselves involved in a humanitarian response. The bridging of the divide between the two sectors 
is in fact one such much needed best practice. 
Key informants across all pilots were positive about the ability to replicate their best practices in other 
nearby areas, as they felt the best practices were relevant to those contexts as well. More specifically, 
in Niger KIs felt the best practices could be implemented in Chad and Nigeria, albeit with proper 
planning. In Uganda, the team deemed the best practice to be relevant for eastern Uganda and the 
Adjumani area. Thus, the Uganda pilot team plans to visit their counterparts in other parts of Uganda 
and share the lessons learned from the pilot. In Nigeria, since the pilot was implemented in the regional 
office, the team looks forward to replicating the same process in remote areas once they resolve 
security and access concerns. 
One of the primary conditions for replicability is to disseminate the findings, not only from this 
evaluation but also from the best practice report. A wide dissemination could trigger interest and 
willingness to test one or more best practices. Dissemination can also be done at regional and local 
levels. For instance, the Niger team has presented their pilot experience to their counterparts in Mali 
and has been solicited to present at an upcoming CaLP conference. 
In terms of replicability more globally, the pilots demonstrated that using the programmatic decisions 
as an entry point for triggering a market analysis or a market monitoring exercise is essential to ensure 
uptake and to ensure market data reach its full potential. The pilot teams easily got away from the 
tools or set methodologies for market analysis (e.g. EMMA, RAM) but needed support to grasp the full 
range of programmatic decisions market data could inform. In that sense, going forward, the uptake 
of market data could only be realized with adequate awareness of what market data can be used for. 
The pilots have achieved this level of awareness among the teams, though this was not their primary 
intended results. 
As such, and as highlighted by the pilot teams at country level, pilots could fairly easily be replicated 
within country offices with a certain level of market awareness. The next pilot roll-out could be 
envisioned with an extra step of capacity building prior to the pilot implementation. This would ensure 
the implementation phase focuses only on identifying programmatic decisions which could be 
enhanced by market data, and the making of those decisions. 
44
8. Conclusions 
The best practices have proven successful in creating an enabling environment for the uptake of 
market data. In each of the evaluated country offices, the team now has the adequate level of market 
awareness, decision-makers are keen to use market data to inform programming and ready to dedicate 
adequate resources to do so, and staff are conscious of the importance of quality data. 
Yet, due to competing priorities and the need to build the team capacity before implementing the best 
practices, some of the pilot activities and therefore outcomes could not be fully realized. As a result, 
most of the pilots have not led yet to programmatic decision-making informed by markets. If pilots 
have contributed to lift the barriers to the use of market data, this has not yet translated into better 
program design. The fact that the selected country offices did not actually have all of the identified 
pre-requisites in place is a missed opportunity. But at the same time, in the humanitarian sector, there 
is no such thing as the perfect piloting environment. 
So as for the central question: if all key humanitarian stakeholders agree on the importance of 
incorporating markets in their programming, how can organizations effectively address the barriers to 
the uptake of market information in programming? 
The gap between standards and actual practice in emergency market analysis and monitoring is likely 
to persist unless organizations actively prioritize and resource the collection and utilization of market 
analysis data, institutionalizing the approach. This would require organizational and donor belief in the 
value of such analysis and demonstrable evidence from programs that have had sufficient time to apply 
and adapt such approaches. 
Unless organizations truly value market analysis and allocate not only resources but also convince 
decision makers of its value, best practices will not be sufficient, however good and relevant they are. 
Donors definitely have a role to play in supporting that mindset shift: they need to be more prescriptive 
in terms of the level of market analysis required in project design, implementation and reporting. 
Cash transfer programs have highlighted the potentially positive role of markets in humanitarian 
interventions as contributors to potentially more cost-effective assistance and also as indicators of 
program appropriateness. Using market data, along with understanding and working with markets, is 
vital to further unlocking this potential. The method that helped realize the enormous strides in the 
humanitarian sector’s overall uptake of CTP – a strong donor push, accompanied by organizational 
buy-in – could also work for the increased uptake of market analysis. 
45
9. Annexes 
9.1. Summary of Best Practices 
This report is an initial output of the Improving the Uptake of Market Analysis project, which aims to 
advance the use of market information in program design and decision-making in the humanitarian 
sector. In addition to highlighting prerequisite factors that influence the use of any type of data in the 
humanitarian sector (capacity, quality, resources, and dissemination), it showcases 11 best practices 
in the collection and use of market-specific information in humanitarian programming across the 
project cycle. The identified best practices are presented in five groups, based on the Key Actions 
presented in the Minimum Standard for Market Analysis (MISMA), relating to Scope, Market Team, 
Data collection, Analysis and sharing and Monitoring. 
The best practices detailed in this report include the following: 
I. Market information is gathered in pre-crisis times to inform future emergency programming, 
disaster risk reduction programming and market support interventions. Pre-crisis market 
analysis and monitoring can enable an understanding of baseline contexts and thereby reduce 
the need for lengthy market assessments when crises occur. In addition, pre-crisis market 
analysis can help teams to develop confidence in collecting and using market data, which 
increases the likelihood that they will do this in crisis times. 
II. The scope of market analysis is broad enough to encompass formal and informal influences 
on both market supply and demand and as such ensure a more comprehensive 
understanding of market supply chain dynamics. The scope of the analysis goes beyond 
market chain actors and encompasses market infrastructure, environment and rules and 
regulations, whether formal or informal. The data collected and subsequent analysis takes into 
consideration consumer behavior and preferences and different gender and ethnic dynamics 
within the market. The information collected is not based on preconceived assumptions of the 
market, nor is it limited to assessing the feasibility of cash-based transfers. 
III. Relevant field-level operations staff take part in market assessments. For example, supply 
chain teams, trained in market-based programming and response analysis, take part in market 
assessments, in order to capitalize on their knowledge of the local context and to increase 
efficiency by ensuring procurement is aligned with the program’s planned activities.
IV. The market analysis process engages diverse team members, from decision-makers to 
communication staff and market assessment enumerators, all of whom understand the 
rationale for collecting market data. By including a range of actors in the market team, the 
uptake, utilization and appreciation of market data is heightened and systematically included 
in all aspects of the program cycle, culminating in the institutionalization of market analysis, 
market monitoring and the implementation of market-based approaches. 
Scope Market
team
Data	
collection
Analysis
and	sharing Monitoring Scope Market
team
Data	
collection
Analysis
and	sharing Monitoring
46
V. Private sector or specialized service providers play an increased role in market assessments 
and monitoring. Outsourcing the collection of market data can be a more cost and resource 
efficient way for different stakeholders to access standardized market information. The 
outsourcing can be limited to certain types of market information, such as price data. 
VI. Data is collected from a range of market actors (including consumers) within the market 
system. Involving a wide range of female and male market actors fosters a more holistic 
understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that may restrict 
vulnerable households from accessing the products they need. Teams engage key informants 
with a broad understanding of local markets in order to gather information more efficiently. 
VII. Humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis, to better understand 
baseline contexts and the aggregated impact of the humanitarian response on markets, 
share information when emergencies occur and support the design of responses that take 
into consideration key aspects of the market system. This will help program members gather 
relevant information in a quicker, more efficient way and design programs that are relevant in 
the short, medium and longer terms. 
VIII. Market analysis findings are shared in coordination meetings to enable a micro and macro 
understanding of markets within the implementation context and appropriate response 
analysis. 
IX. Adaptive management is employed, enabling the program team to adapt the response 
based on evolving market conditions. 
X. Market monitoring data is collected via mobile devices and automatically analyzed in data 
management systems, making it available for faster decision making. The use of shared 
platforms for market information facilitates the comparison and interpretation of data. 
XI. Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring. To provide usable 
and useful information, market monitoring goes beyond price monitoring, looking at 
additional indicators such as the volume of trade and the availability and quality of key 
commodities. Market data collection takes place as part of regular program activities and is 
tailored to data needed to inform programming. Teams develop tools and guidance to support 
the translation of monitoring data into actions. 
Scope Market
team
Data	
collection
Analysis and	
sharing Monitoring Scope Market
team
Data	
collection
Analysis
and	sharing Monitoring Scope Market team Data	collection Analysis and	
sharing
Monitoring
9.2. Evaluation Matrix 
Evaluation Question Evaluation Sub-questions How Judgment Will Be Formed Likely Sources 
and Methods
To what extent did the pilots effectively reach 
their overall objective (i.e. did the piloted best 
practices facilitate the uptake of market 
analysis)?
 To what extent has market information 
generated through this pilot been used to 
inform programmatic decision making?
 What factors contributed to or hampered 
the implementation of the best practices 
and subsequently the uptake of market data 
by the country team and the global focal 
points?
 To what extent have the participating 
country office teams accepted the piloted 
practices?
-To what extent did the pilot projects achieve their specific 
objectives?
-Was appropriate data collected and analyzed during the pilot?
-Was the market data subsequently utilized to inform programming? 
In what ways?
- What have been the main barriers and enablers, both internal and 
external, to the uptake of the pilots?
-To what extent are the practices piloted likely to continue after the 
end of the project phase?
-To what extent and how can the successful piloted best practices be 
replicated to other programs or countries of intervention?
-To what extent did the participating staff find the piloted practice 
user-friendly to implement?
- Do the staff feel that the piloted practice can increase the uptake 
of market analysis? 
-To what extent did participating staff find the piloted practice 
useful?
-What was the level of effort required to integrate the piloted 
practice in the ongoing activities?
-To what extent are pilot activities being seen as regular27 activities?
Goal obtainment: is data collected, is it analyzed, is 
it used to inform programming28 Desk review, KIIs
Quality check:
29 of data collected, analysis Desk review, KIIs
Perception: Staff’s perception that the best practice 
can influence the uptake of market analysis; have 
effects that developed beyond the pilot time.
KIIs, observation
User perception: of challenges and enablers in 
uptake
User satisfaction: of the process, type of info 
gathered, analysis, user-friendliness of piloted 
Survey, KIIs
 
27 Regular being understood as being done on a certain time interval (i.e. weekly, monthly, etc.) as determined appropriate by the field staff. 
28 This will determine how the evaluation matrix is applied to each pilot. The focus of the evaluation will be on the step(s) where the breakdown occurs per piloted project (i.e. market information 
is not used to inform decision-making because it is not collected, not analyzed, etc.). 
29 The information will be assumed to be relevant (i.e. being used to inform programming), if it is deemed of good quality. i.e. it needs a minimal amount of time to clean it, it contains minimal 
gaps/inconsistencies and data errors, it generally is not missing values, and database structure is user-friendly (i.e. data is labelled correctly, etc.). Determining the quality of the data analysis 
process depends on the factors laid out in the sub-evaluation questions (i.e. was appropriate data collected, was it analyzed, was the analysis timely, who received the analysis, did they read 
the analysis, etc.). 
48
practice, ease it was absorbed into ongoing 
activities
What were the additional time and budgetary 
costs for integrating the pilot into ongoing 
activities?
- What were the additional time considerations for integrating the 
pilot into ongoing regular activities?
-What were the additional cost considerations for integrating the 
pilot into ongoing regular activities?
-Are these costs greater than other market assessments?30
Time: of collecting data, of analyzing data, HQ 
member(s) supporting the project (# of hours spent) 
Time burden compared to other market 
assessments31
Desk review 
(timesheets), 
survey, KIIs
Cost: of collecting data, of analyzing data32
Cost burden compared to other market 
assessments33
Perception: Staff’s perception that the best practice 
has more benefit than cost; data and analysis 
quality/why info is not used.34
Desk review (cost 
sheets), KIIs, 
survey
What are the unintended effects (positive or 
negative) of the piloted project?
-What have been the positive or negative unintended effects of the 
piloted projects? Open questions to allow for those to emerge KII, observation 
 
30 Findings related to efficiency will focus on “by how much” costs increased to implement the best practices. While the evaluation does not intend to conduct desk-review to compare costs 
with other market assessments, the evaluators will consult Emily Sloane, Sana Khan, Alison Hemberger, Kassoum Ouattara, Helene Juillard and Lili Mohiddin to form a professional judgment 
to determine if the increased costs appear to be realistic/manageable or too great and as such would negatively affect the pilots’ ability to be replicated or sustained. 
31 See footnote 10. 
32 Assessing cost will be aware of pilot resourcing, i.e. if there were issues with the best practices process due to a lack of resources. 
33 See footnote 10. 
34 Team acceptance looks at the ease of which the best practice was absorbed into ongoing project activities, i.e. if it lowered quantitative costs and the degree of coherence or connectedness. 
It will also look at the user-friendliness of the best practices and if the best practice directly responds to challenges in the uptake of market analysis outlined in the best practices report. This 
analysis of team acceptance rests on the logic that if the piloted best practices are coherent/connected and user friendly then the team will be more likely to accept them and be satisfied with 
the best practices process. 
9.3. Documents reviewed 
Sl. No. Name of Document
1 “Improving the Uptake of Humanitarian Market Analysis” - Best Practices Report
2 Pilot Implementation Plan for Nigeria
3 Pilot Implementation Plan for Niger
4 Pilot Implementation Plan for Nigeria
5 Time monitoring sheets for all three pilots
6 Cost monitoring sheet for Nigeria
7 Field Visit Report for Niger, Nigeria and Uganda
8 Workshop notes for Uganda
9 Market Monitoring Round 1 Draft Report from CRS Nigeria
10 Market Monitoring Round 1 Draft Report from IRC Nigeria
11 ToRs of Market Development Working Group - Uganda
12 ToR for Joint Market Assessment – Lamwo Uganda
13 Monitoring call notes for all three pilots
9.4. List of Key Informants 
Niger 
Name Title Organization Email
Patrice Boa Sr. Program Coordinator IRC Niger PatriceComoe.Boa@rescue.org
Ahmadou Ardo Spécialiste -contrôle de qualité IRC Niger Ahmadou.Kaou@rescue.org
Cissé Soumana Manager National IRC Niger Cisse.IbrahimSoumana@rescue.org
Nafissa Riba Community Mobilizer IRC Niger NanaNafissa.RibaTchiwake@rescue.org
Sani Issa Manager M&E/ICT4P IRC Niger SaniIssa.MamanNourou@rescue.org
Diagori Abdoulaye Community Mobilizer IRC Niger Abdoulaye.Diagori@rescue.org
Uganda 
Name Title Organization Email
Miji Parks Director of Programs Mercy Corps UG mpark@mercycorps.org
Robert Dikua Senior Program Manager Mercy Corps UG rdikua@mercycorps.org
Douglas Amo Agri. Extension Officer Mercy Corps UG damo@mercycorps.org
Bob Acaye M&E Officer Mercy Corps UG bacaye@mercycorps.org
Wilfred Kamulegeya Senior Agronomist GADC wkamulegeya@gadc.co.ug
Godfrey Toolit Programme Associate UNHCR Uganda toolit@unhcr.org
Gloria Adyambo Livelihoods Coordinator Food for Hungry gadyambo@fh.org
Martina Starace Program Manager CESVI martinastarace@cesvioverseas.org
David Oceng Input dealer Jola Enterprises Ltd fs.doceng@gmail.com
Nigeria 
Name Title Organization Email
Sadia Khan Cash and Markets Advisor CRS Nigeria sadia.khan@crs.org
Lola Administration Officer CRS Nigeria N/A
Imanu Logistics Officer CRS Nigeria N/A
Maxwell Samaila Sr. Prog. Mgr. (Emergency) CRS Nigeria maxwell.samaila@crs.org
Gyanu Tamang MEAL Coordinator CRS Nigeria gyanu.tamang@crs.org
Charles Project Manager CRS Nigeria N/A
Joseph MEAL Manager IRC Nigeria N/A
Ermanu ERD Manager IRC Nigeria N/A
Adebe Gabriel MEAL Officer CRS Nigeria gabriel.adebe@crs.org
Timothy Team Leader (Hygiene) CRS Nigeria N/A
Emmanuelle Team Leader (WASH) CRS Nigeria N/A
Remote Experts 
Name Title Organization Email
Emily Sloane IRC Market Specialist IRC HQ – New York Emily.Sloane@rescue.org
Sana Khan IRC Research Advisor IRC HQ – New York Sana.Khan@rescue.org
Allison Hemberger Sr. Advisor (Markets & Learning) Mercy Corps ahemberger@mercycorps.org
Kassoum Outtara Advisor – Food Security & Markets CRS Kassoum.ouattara@crs.org
9.5. Questionnaires (KIIs and survey) 
A) Questionnaire for Key Informant Interviews 
BRIEF BACKGROUND
As you are aware, IRC has partnered with CRS and Mercy Corps to undertake the “Improving the 
Uptake of Market Analysis” project, which aims to tackle the factors that prevent gathering and using 
market data to ensure that field teams across sectors use market data in the design, implementation 
and adaption of humanitarian programs in a consistent manner. The project has piloted best practices 
in Niger, Uganda and Nigeria. 
We are now in the final phase of the project, which is to evaluate the piloted best practices. The 
purpose of this evaluation is to generate learning about how future programs can increase the uptake 
of market information in decision-making. The evaluation does not focus on the overall program 
hosting the pilot, nor does it assess the implementation of the best practice itself (i.e. it is only 
interested in implementation as far as it has impacted achieving the pilots’ outcomes).
INSTRUCTIONS
This structured interview guide provides an overview of all the topics and corresponding questions, 
however each interview will be tailored to focus on the set of questions that are most directly relevant 
to your expertise and interest. 
Interviewees will have access to the questionnaire prior to the interview to have time to adequately 
prepare their responses. Interviewees are also invited to review the pilot’s logic model and/or other 
key documents prior to the discussion. 
The interview will last about 45-50 minutes. The information you provide will be used to inform the 
evaluation, but no one will be quoted individually. 
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: 
Position: 
Organization: 
Email address: 
QUESTIONS
Introduction: 
1. What was your role in the pilot? How did you participate to the pilot? 
For the focal points: 
1. Looking at the implementation plan, would you make any changes to the logic model? 
52
2. Looking at the best practices report, and especially at the sections on the essential pre￾conditions, influencing factors and assumptions, what changes would you make to this 
section on the basis of your experience? 
3. Do you think the pilot has had more benefits or costs compared to more “standard” 
approaches to market assessments and analysis? Why or why not? 
All Pilots 
1. During the pilot, was relevant data35 collected, analyzed and used? If not, why? 
2. How would you rate the quality of this data? 
3. Has the data quality improved since before the pilot? 
4. Do you think that this best practice has influenced the uptake of market analysis? Why or why 
not (are there any limiting factors)? Do you have any examples of how the pilot influenced the 
use/ uptake of market analysis? 
5. Do you think the impact of the best practices will continue beyond the pilot timeframe, and if 
so, how (and how frequently)? If not, why not? 
6. Are you satisfied with the pilot process (i.e. the type of information gathered, the analysis, 
etc.)? Why or why not? 
7. Did you find the practice piloted to be user-friendly (not the administrative activities 
associated with organizing the consultant visit or the time monitoring, but the activities 
directly related to the implementation of the practice itself)? Was it easily absorbed into 
ongoing activities? Why or why not?
8. After the initial pilot set up phase was complete, what were the costs and benefits associated 
with the pilot? 
9. Were there any effects of the piloted practice that surprised you? Did you have any 
unexpected experiences while implementing the pilot? 
10. Do you think this best practice is replicable to other projects (in-country or otherwise)? 
a. If not, why? 
b. If so, how would you replicate it? 
11. If you were to do this pilot over, what would you do differently? 
12. Are there any other comments related to the piloted best practice(s) that you would like to 
share? 
13. Did any unforeseen actors benefit from the pilot? If so, who and in what way? 
Niger 
 
35 For Nigeria: non-price market data of the targeted markets. For Uganda: market data from development programs, 
consumers and traders to inform the design of the humanitarian response. For Niger: non-price market data for the 
targeted markets. 
53
1. For the piloted best practices: 
a. Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring 
b. Real-time market monitoring data using mobile devices 
c. Adaptive management 
To what extent did the pilot achieve its specific objectives (listed below)? Why or why not? 
d. Identify relevant non-price market monitoring indicators (in addition to the price 
monitoring indicators) that can be used to monitor current program appropriateness 
and, enable IRC Niger to inform future programming. 
e. Ensure future market monitoring is gender sensitive and adequately captures the 
disaggregated access and interaction with markets of both traders and households. 
f. Use the market monitoring findings to make adjustments to the program strategy 
when necessary. (In particular to make adjustments to the frequency, value or transfer 
modality of programs.) 
g. Use the market monitoring findings to better prepare for the response to the next 
disaster by collecting (non-price) data that has been identified as essential in 
humanitarian program design. 
h. Have a baseline of market data that can been used as reference for future market 
analyses particularly when a disaster hits 
2. Were certain best practices easier to integrate or seemingly more important for influencing 
the uptake of market analysis? If so, which ones, and why? 
3. Have the tools that were developed for this pilot (CommCare questionnaire, excel Dash 
boards, etc.) helped to improve market monitoring (in terms of time, data quality etc.)? Why 
or why not? 
4. Do you think including Save the Children in the pilot has had any effect on the best practices’ 
ability to increase the use of market information in decision-making? Why or why not? 
Nigeria 
1. For the piloted best practice: 
a. Market monitoring is comprehensive and goes beyond price monitoring 
To what extent did the pilot achieve its specific objectives (listed below)? Why or why not? 
a. Identify relevant non-price market monitoring indicators (in addition to the price 
monitoring indicators) that can be used to monitor current program appropriateness 
and enable CRS Nigeria to inform future programming. 
b. Ensure future market monitoring is gender sensitive and adequately capture the 
disaggregated access and interaction with markets of both traders and households. 
c. Use the market monitoring findings to make adjustments to the program strategy 
when necessary. 
54
d. Use the market monitoring findings to better prepare for the response to the next 
disaster by collecting (non-price) data that has been identified as essential in 
humanitarian program design. 
e. Have a baseline of market data that can been used as reference for future market 
analyses particularly when a disaster hits 
Uganda 
1. For the piloted best practices: 
a. Humanitarian and development actors collaborate on market analysis 
b. Private sector or specialized service providers play an increased role in market 
assessments and monitoring 
c. Data is collected from a range of market actors (including consumers) within the 
market system 
To what extent did the pilot achieve its specific objectives (listed below)? Why or why not? 
d. To utilize development program market analysis to inform humanitarian programing. 
In doing so, the aim is to improve the potential positive impact of refugee response 
programs on the local economy by addressing challenges and opportunities within the 
market system in humanitarian program design. 
e. To identify and document methods to incorporate market actors (including 
consumers) in data collection and analysis. 
2. Can you provide specific examples of how market analysis data from the development 
programs were used to inform the design of the humanitarian response to the influx of 
refugees? 
3. Were certain best practices easier to integrate or seemingly more important for influencing 
the uptake of market analysis? If so, which ones, and why? 
4. What were the influencing or limiting factors to collaboration with humanitarian or 
development actors? How were some of those challenges overcome? 
5. What were some of the challenges faced in using specialized service providers or collecting 
data from a range of market actors? How were those challenges overcome? 
Wrap up questions: 
1. What changed in your job as a result of the project? 
2. If you were to start over the pilot implementation, what would you do differently? 
3. What are the 3 pieces of key learning from this pilot? 
4. Anything else we have not discussed yet? 
B) Questionnaire for Online Survey 
BRIEF BACKGROUND
As you are aware, IRC has partnered with CRS and Mercy Corps to undertake the “Improving the 
Uptake of Market Analysis” project, which aims to tackle the factors that prevent gathering and using 
market data to ensure that field teams across sectors use market data in the design, implementation 
and adaption of humanitarian programs in a consistent manner. The project has piloted best practices 
in Niger, Uganda and Nigeria. 
You have been selected to provide feedback via this brief survey based on your involvement in market 
monitoring. 
Do you agree to be part of the survey? 
Yes 
No 
INSTRUCTIONS
Please respond to the questions below. 
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: 
Position: 
Organization: 
QUESTIONS
For the first five statements below, indicate if you totally disagree, disagree, agree, totally agree, or 
not applicable (N/A). For each statement, there is a text box for you to provide a short narrative to your 
answer. 
Niger 
1. I am able to collect market information quicker than before the pilot. 
2. I can upload the market information quicker than before. 
3. The quality of the market information is better than before. 
4. I understand why we collect market information better than before. 
5. I have easily incorporated the new market monitoring into my regular market monitoring 
activities. 
6. Are there any other pros or cons to the piloted practice of gathering market information? 
7. Are you satisfied overall with the new market monitoring process? If not, why? 
8. Will you be able to continue to collect this market information after the pilot ends? If not, 
why? 
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9. Do you have any other comments? 
Nigeria
1. I am able to collect market information. 
2. I can upload the market information in a timely manner. 
3. The quality of the market information is good. 
4. I understand why we collect market information. 
5. I have easily incorporated the new market monitoring into my regular market monitoring 
activities. 
6. Are there any other pros or cons to the piloted practice of gathering market information? 
7. Are you satisfied overall with the new market monitoring process? If not, why? 
8. Will you be able to continue to collect this market information after the pilot ends? If not, 
why? 
9. Do you have any other comments?