Emergency Market Mapping and Analysis Toolkit

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The Emergency Market Mapping and Analysis Toolkit^[1] is a guidance manual for humanitarian staff in sudden-onset emergencies that aims to improve emergency responses by encouraging and assisting relief agencies to better understand, support and make use of local market-systems in disaster zones. EMMA offers a quick, rough-and-ready analysis with practical recommendations that are suitable for the early stages of emergencies. It does not rely on users having specialist economic or market analysis skills; and it is broad in scope: addressing survival needs, livelihood protection and the transition to economic recovery.

The rationale for EMMA is that better understanding of the critical market systems in a disaster situation enables agencies to consider a broader range of humanitarian responses. The EMMA process assists agencies to address humanitarian needs more effectively, while also not hindering economic recovery by side-lining the local private sector.

EMMA analysis can give humanitarian agencies more confidence in non-conventional relief activities: for example, cash-based interventions, local procurement and other innovative forms of support to market actors (e.g., traders). Better use of local market-system capabilities can, in turn, mean more efficient use of humanitarian resources, faster economic recovery and less risk of long-term dependency on external assistance.

The EMMA toolkit was envisaged and commissioned by Oxfam and IRC, with support from InterAction and USAID’s Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance. You can read more about EMMA in the Humanitarian Practice Network.^[2] and Emergency Nutrition Network publications Field Exchange.^[3]

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