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, interconnected value chains, 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.
Building on a framework for inclusive market systems developed early in the project, LEO pursued a comprehensive learning agenda that included the following core areas, explored in full in the body of this report:
- M&E for Market Systems
- Facilitation
- Understanding & Measuring Systemic Change
- Women’s Economic Empowerment
- Resilience and Sustainable Poverty Escapes
- Scaling Impact through Agricultural Input and Output Markets; and
- Pathways out of Poverty: Labor, and Push/Pull Approaches
