Sector Selection and analysis

Selecting winning sectors for women’s economic empowerment

The WIN program was set up in Mozambique to advance women’s economic empowerment (WEE), especially among women entrepreneurs, using a Market Systems Development (MSD) approach. MSD programs work with market actors (private and public sector) to design and test ways to improve the functioning of a market for the benefit of a specific target group – in this case, low-income women. Some programs have pre-defined sectors from their donors. Others, like WIN, explore multiple options – indeed, multiple definitions of “sector” – and keep refining these throughout the program. This guide was created to help other MSD programs working in the area of WEE to select sectors. The tool lays out how to scope out, select and analyze sectors, while providing useful tips on how WIN did it for its target group. The guide is part of a four part series on designing, implementing and monitoring impactful MSD programs to advance WEE. The four chapters are: Sector Selection and Analysis (this tool), Partner Selection, Intervention Strategy and Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation.