Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) was a three-year contract to support programming that fosters inclusive growth through markets. Building on USAID’s value chain approach, LEO focused on:
- a systems approach to markets, acknowledging the complex interrelationships among market actors, market and household systems, climate change, nutrition, the policy environment, and sociocultural factors, including poverty and gender; and
- inclusion, recognizing the role that a spectrum of actors—from resource-poor households and small-scale enterprises to larger and more formal firms—play in catalyzing market change and growth that benefits the poor.
LEO has developed an inclusive market systems framework that places value chains in the broader context of markets, communities and households. An inclusive market system development approach focuses on building the capacity and resilience of local systems, leveraging the incentives and resources of the private sector, ensuring the beneficial inclusion of the very poor, and stimulating change and innovation that continues to grow beyond the life of the project.
