The Danida Market Development Partnerships (DMDP) consitutes a new business instrument which is situated at the pre-commercial end of the scale of business instruments as compared to other instruments that operate on near-market terms. The proposed partnership projects should be able to demonstrate long term sustainability and scalability of the business venture enabling it to continue after the project period with support from Danida. The suppport to commercially oriented multi-stakeholder partnerships takes point of departure in the emerging trend of seeking to acheive a higher development impact by building on the international organisations etc. on the other side.
DMDP works as a challenge fund with both a concept note and a full project developmetn phase. 2016 constituted a pilot phase in which 5 partnership consortia were selected for funding.

The services provided inlcude the following main activities:
1) Concept note stage:
Assesment and scoring of all concept notes and shortisting of applications in close consultation and meetings with the client and final selection  of application for full application.
2) Full project proposal development stage:
- Facilitate montly workshops for all partenrships consortia and make presentations on e.g. how to prepare the project, Theory of change, results frameworks, partenrship agreements/MoUs, output-based budgeting, risk analysis and impact assessments.
- Technical sparring with all individual consortia on their project development including discussion and feedback on ToC, results framework and intervention logics.
- Assistance to the appraisal process in Danida including detailed written comments on project proposals and its sub-components.
3) Administrative assistance:
- Development of a full application format including annexes (reporting templates, budget format etc).
- Lessond learned note on the first concept note phase as input to Danida's framing of the future runds of DMDP.
- Revision of the DMDP guidelines and associated formats based on experiences from pilot phase. This included refinement of assessment criteria for applications.
- Establishment of the results framework for DMDP as a programme including considerations on how the individual projects feed into this framework.