Photo credit: E.Millstein / Mercy Corps (DRC 2022)
This webinar has taken place, you can watch the recording and access the slides below.
Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Time: 4:00 pm East Africa | 3:00 pm Central Africa | 2:00 pm West Africa | 8:00 am ET
Agriculture is central to livelihoods and food security in fragile and crisis-affected settings. Ensuring farmers have access to sufficient, affordable, and high-quality seed of preferred varieties is therefore critical. Yet, despite decades of experience and investment, much seed aid remains short-term and unsustainable – too often creating dependency rather than strengthening local systems.
Mercy Corps, through the ISSD Africa program and in collaboration with PRO-WASH & SCALE, has released a new paper, Addressing Seed Security through Market-Based Programming: Interventions, Examples & Opportunities. The paper explores how market-based approaches can strengthen the effectiveness of seed aid. Using the Market-Based Programming (MBP) Framework, it synthesizes evidence and examples from humanitarian, seed system, and market systems development contexts to highlight practical interventions with potential for lasting impact.
This webinar explored how market-based principles can make seed security interventions effective, efficient, and sustainable. This interactive session introduced the MBP Framework, showcased a real-world success story, and highlighted practical steps to strengthen seed aid and build more resilient, market-driven seed systems.
Speakers:
Sasha Muench, Independent Consultant: Sasha has over 20 years of experience applying market-based approaches to humanitarian, recovery, and development interventions in fragile contexts. She co-founded the Markets in Crises Community of Practice to help the humanitarian and development sectors come together to increase program scale, impact, and sustainability in these settings.
John Rachkara, AGRA: John is currently Senior Advisor, Agriculture Market Systems at AGRA. Previously, he was Chief of Party for the Nigeria Rural Resilience Activity and has dedicated many years to applying rigorous market system development principles to challenging contexts across Africa.
Shawn McGuire, FAO: Agricultural Officer (Seed Security), Plant Production and Protection Division (NSP), FAO. Shawn supports FAO’s emergency and resilience-building activities related to seeds around the world, working to improve quality and impact of programming and to develop resilient seed systems.
Geoffrey Otim, Mercy Corps: Geoffrey Otim, Mercy Corps: Geoffrey is a seed systems specialist, currently serving as Senior Advisor, Seed Systems – Humanitarian & Fragile Contexts, at Mercy Corps. Geoffrey leads Mercy Corps Action Learning Projects within ISSD Africa as wel as supporting the PRO-WASH & SCALE Award, under the US Department of State. Geoffrey’s work focuses on promoting seed sector reform and policy engagement, supporting farmer-led enterprises to enhance smallholder access to quality seed preferred by farmers and strengthen food security and resilience.