The story of Katalyst - A summary of the project management experiences of Swisscontact

The Agribusiness for Trade Competitiveness Project (ATC-P), branded as Katalyst, is a pioneer market systems development project contributing to sustainable poverty reduction in Bangladesh. It is implemented by Swisscontact under the umbrella of the Ministry of Commerce, Government of Bangladesh. The project has been operating in Bangladesh since 2003 in three phases. Phase 3 of Katalyst (March 2014 - March 2017) is co-funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the UK Government, and the Danish International Development Agency (Danida). In phase 3, under the ‘Capitalisation’ mandate, Katalyst has extracted useful elements and lessons of the project and shared among the relevant institutions. Through ‘the story of Katalyst’, we have made attempts to capture the evolution and share the management experiences of implementing the project which could be useful to others specially those who are implementing similar projects. Since the main focus of this publication is to provide information on the management of the project, partnerships, communication and approaches, it is different from other publications that highlight Katalyst’s success and results against its targets.