The MSPs are forums where all actors in the value chains could come together and meet face to face. The project will facilitate these ongoing MSP, business to business (B2B), business to service (B2S) and Contract Farming processes and then provide technical and financial support to address the particular priority bottlenecks and actions identified by the value chain actors that they cannot directly address without additional external technical or financial support.
For the cluster-level MSPs, experience from elsewhere is that the producer groups and traders/agribusinesses recognize the value in these dialogue meetings and are keen to continue them themselves after the project as part of their ongoing relationships.
At the hub level, the issues become more strategic / policy related and do require some continued professional facilitation among the different actors. This is not a significant cost, but is necessary. Different models for sustaining this are available but must be acceptable and negotiated with the actors in each VC once the VCs are more vibrant and MSPs more mature. In some countries these are done through industry associations – if they are genuinely representative of producers and businesses – while in others the government continues to support this industry facilitation service as a “public good” (e.g. Netherlands swine industry).
