Billionaire, UN expand EA village project Development Scheme in EA

The United Nations, an American billionaire and a renowned economist are jointly expanding an experimental project that, they say, has brought major development gains to targeted villages in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and other African countries.

Jeffrey Sachs, the economist, and George Soros, the billionaire investor, outlined the new phase of the initiative at UN headquarters in New York.

The Millennium Villages scheme, launched five years ago, “has made tremendous breakthroughs in achieving the Millennium Development Goals in places that were written off as hopeless,” Mr Sachs told reporters.

He cited dramatic advances in maize yields, use of anti-malaria bed nets, and prevention of stunting among children in many of the original 10 Millennium Villages, two of which are in Kenya, with one each in Tanzania and Uganda.

Additional cash

Mr Soros said he is giving $27.4 million to help finance the expansion of the Millennium Villages. He is also making available $20 million in loans to support businesses in the villages. Mr Soros previously donated $50 million to the initiative.

That earlier gift was made despite strong opposition on the part of the board of directors of Mr Soros’ charitable foundation, he pointed out.

Some researchers say that claims made for the success of the project are overblown.

“Comparing trends at the [village] intervention sites in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria to trends in the surrounding areas yields much more modest estimates of the project’s effects” than do findings presented by the project’s sponsors, a pair of development specialists wrote in a paper last year.

Michael Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes, both associated with an international development think tank in Washington, suggest that more rigorous evaluation of the project is essential in order to gauge its actual impact.

“The project costs large amounts of money — $1.5 million per village in very poor areas, spent annually at a rate that exceeds the size of the entire local economy,” they wrote.

Asked at the UN press conference about these less flattering evaluations, Mr Sachs dismissed them as “armchair criticism that is not really a reflection of the reality of this project.” He said that “peer-reviewed scientific investigation” has affirmed the success of the undertaking.

Many African countries not represented in the first phase of the project are asking that it be introduced in their own rural areas, Mr Sachs added.

One of the new projects was recently launched in Pemba in Zanzibar. Tanzania has one of the original Millennium Villages, Mbola in Uyui District.

In 2008, health workers visited all 6000 households in the Mbola cluster, according to the Millennium Villages website. More than 12,000 of the 39,000 local residents have received malaria treatments, the project says.

Children are said to have benefitted dramatically from the initiative in the Ruhiira village cluster in southwestern Uganda’s Isingoro District. The project website reports a 20 percent reduction in chronic malnutrition (stunting) among children under age two along with an increase from 5 percent to 74 percent in the proportion of primary school students receiving school meals.

In Sauri, which was the first of the Millennium Villages, average maize yield has increased from 1.9 tons per hectare to 5.0 tons per hectare, the project’s sponsors say.

They boast of education gains in Dertu, pointing out that the local primary school was judged the third best in the region in 2009. All 28 Dertu students who took the standard eight examinations passed and entered secondary schools, the Millennium Villages’ website says.

The Sauri village cluster in Nyanza Province and Dertu in Northeastern Province have managed to sustain progress despite unrest and dislocation in their respective areas, Ms Sachs said.

“A lot was burned down around [Sauri]” in the violence following the 2007 elections, he noted. But Sauri residents “stood guard and said ‘you’re not going to burn down the Millennium Villages,’” Mr Sachs related.

Dertu, which is about 80 kilometres north of the enormous Dadaab refugee complex, has emerged as “an epicentre of emergency relief in this region,” he noted. Despite drought and social pressures caused by a heavy influx of Somali refugees, Dertu has remained stable and has helped provide water, veterinary care and telephone services for others in the area, Mr Sachs added.