Number of Firms or Individuals gaining Access to a Value Chain

This indicator measures the number of firms or individuals that newly participate in a specific value chain. The value chain can be at the individual firm level (e.g., a major poultry firm) or for a particular sub-sector of the economy in a country (e.g., sugar sector)

A value chain describes the full range of activities that are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the intermediary phases of production and delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use. The term value chain is usually used with a developmental connotation addressing productivity, growth and job creation in the market system, as opposed to the term supply chain which looks at the chain from a buyer’s perspective. (ILO A rough guide to value chain development. 2015a).

Value chain actors can include for example producers, input suppliers, traders, processors and retailers.

New access: new participation in a specific market or value chain. The entry is only relative to the client or beneficiary's own operations, and applies to clients or beneficiaries who enter a relevant market, which is denoted by improved flow of knowledge and information, contractual relationships, selling products or services to actors in the value chain, to other distributors (wholesale) or to the ultimate consumer (retail).

It includes both forward and backward (upstream or downstream supply chain) market linkages. The acquisition of new linkages may be developed using licensing agreements, supplier sources, international sourcing/distribution, etc. (adapted from HIPSO).

Direct employees that distribute an organisation's goods or services should be considered as employees and not as distributors. Distributors do not need to exclusively sell a specific firm's products or services. (adapted from IRIS ID PI2758)

What activities should the indicator be used for?

When: This indicator should be used for projects that set up either new or existing value chains with a number of locally available firms or individuals.

The value chain includes input supply, production, assembly, processing, wholesale, and export.

Firms can include producers, input suppliers, distributors, wholesalers, and processors. In the agribusiness sector, the individuals are typically smallholder farmer households or wage workers. "Farming" includes crop production, forestry, animal production, aquaculture and fisheries.

individual vs. firm By type or size of firm (MSME, SME) By sex By age

By type or size of firm: Relevant disaggregation depends on the PSD actor's portfolio. If client firms are very different in size, then disaggregation by size of firm is valuable, as the size of the companies accessing a value chain partly determines the development impacts.

By gender: Number of female self-employed individuals, percentage of women employed, and/or number of female-owned firms.

Calculations and reporting on female ownership should use regional or local laws or norms when they exist. Where laws or norms do not exist, female-owned firms could be defined as firms with a minimum of 51 percent female ownership, or a majority of women in their boards. In case shares are publicly traded or owned by institutions these cannot contribute to the number of female owned shares (adapted from IRIS ID OI2840).

By age: Number of self-employed youth, youth employed, or firms owned by youth (age 15-under 25). Calculations and reporting on youth should use regional or local laws or norms when they exist. Where laws or norms do not exist, youth workers can be defined as aged 15- 25 (United Nations, 2017)

Issue for consideration While disaggregating by gender can help understand gender issues related to interventions or investment, the data should be interpreted with care, as different explanatory factors may be at play.

Unit for measurement: Number of self-employed male or female individuals reporting new access to value chains (adapted from HIPSO). Number of firms reporting new access to value chains (adapted from HIPSO).

Coverage:

Data need to be specific to the relevant value chain, which varies by local, national or international level, sector and product. See key measurement challenges.

Delineating which clients or beneficiaries actually gained new access requires a clear definition and baseline of existing participation and new participation of clients or beneficiaries in local, national or global value chains.

Including consumers is not advised to avoid inflating the figures

Data Source: Measurement is context and intervention specific, and is best done within a confined geographic space, or in a specific well-defined part of the value chain. See key measurement challenges. Data can be self-reported by firms or individuals involved in the intervention or collected via a survey approach. Depending on the specific intervention and context, Chamber of Commerce data could be a relevant data source.

Data quality: Survey design should adhere to strict quality criteria, through internal quality checks and consultation with relevant teams. Further data verification in the field is recommended. Self-reported data may be verified by the PSD actor implementing the intervention or investment or external auditors for example checking outliers and logical inconsistencies. To assess new access to (a) value chain(s) baseline data can be valuable. As an alternative, or in addition to collecting new baseline data, existing data may provide useful information, for example on the business environment in a country, see the 46 DONOR COMMITTEE FOR ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/ of the World Bank. Given the fundamental key measurement challenges, these challenges need to be addressed to ensure data quality, especially in terms of clear definitions and delineations of what is precisely measured and how it can be plausibly linked to the intervention.

Timing: The change in new access to (a) value chain(s) should be established by a measurement at the start (baseline) and at the end (endline) of the intervention or investment only. A mid-term smaller data collection effort may be considered to keep track, especially for longer term interventions or investments. The measured value can be analysed and/or aggregated over multiple years particularly to understand fluctuations and the sustainability of any income increases. To further increase insights about the sustainability of changes in income, monitoring after completion of the intervention or investment period can be considered, e.g. after 3- 5 years