Practical and scalable demonstration of an approach to tackle extreme rural poverty
The Millennium Villages project offers a unique, holistic, innovative model for empowering rural communities to lift themselves out of extreme poverty. With the help of new advances in science and technology, local staff members work with villages to create and implement low cost, sustainable, community-led action plans that are tailored to the villages’ specific needs and designed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Through a partnership between Millennium Promise, the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the United Nations Development Programme, the project helps ensure that farmers have improved harvests by supporting the use of fertilizers, soil management, improved seeds and rain-harvesting techniques. Clinics to service the entire community are constructed at a minimal cost and linked to essential medicine supplies. Schools, roads, and water points are constructed and repaired in partnership with the local government to help boost school enrollment, improve water supplies, and link communities to markets. Community committees and local governments help manage these initiatives and develop a solid foundation for sustainable growth.
Bringing to life the Millennium Development Goals
In 2000, world leaders gathered at the UN and set targets for tackling extreme poverty. These targets become known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs have galvanized an unprecedented global effort in the fight to end extreme poverty. However, progress has been uneven across the globe with sub-Saharan Africa the furthest off-track toward meeting the Goals.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest proportion of people living in extreme poverty in the world – more than 40 percent or roughly 300 million people living on less than $1 a day. The continent’s environmental, epidemiological and geographical challenges – including low productivity agriculture, high disease burdens and high transport costs – leave African countries most vulnerable to persistent extreme poverty. Millennium Promise focuses on this region to partner with communities with the greatest need.
Millennium Promise’s flagship initiative, the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), works with communities, governments, and other partners to demonstrate that the MDGs can be achieved through practical and scalable solutions within the bounds of existing aid commitments from the world’s richest countries. To date, the project reaches nearly a half a million people in 80 villages which are clustered into 14 sites across 10 African countries.
Village costs per person per year
The Millennium Villages aim to demonstrate that the MDGs are achievable within the bounds of existing global commitments on foreign aid. At the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, leaders committed to raising their countries’ official development assistance levels to 0.7 percent of gross national income by 2015. They also committed to more than double aid to Africa by 2010, which would amount to aid flows of approximately $85 per capita (in 2004 terms). The Millennium Villages project funding model, which calls for between $60-80 per capita of external support mobilized by Millennium Promise, falls within this target. The model includes contributions from all of the initiatives’ major stakeholders, including (1) the community; (2) the host government; (3) partners; and (4) the Millennium Promise-mobilized funds. The model invests across sectors including health & nutrition, agriculture & environment, education, infrastructure, gender equality and business development.
There are two phases of the Millennium Villages project, each with its own funding requirement. Phase I includes years 1-5 of a village and Phase II includes years 6-10. When many of the Millennium Villages were launched in 2006, they were funded for their first five years by an original Phase I budget that was determined in 2004. It called for a total of $120 per person per year, broken out as follows:
- Millennium Promise, $60
- Local and National Governments, $30
- Partner Organizations, $20
- The Community, $10
Given that there are approximately 5,000 people per village, the Millennium Promise-mobilized financing need for these villages is about $300,000 per Millennium Village per year.
In 2009, Millennium Promise reevaluated the Phase I budget in light of inflation, lessons learned, and the effects of the 2008 energy price spike. The Phase I budget for a Millennium Village was then adjusted to $160 per person per year, with the following revised allocation:
- Millennium Promise, $80
- Local and National Governments, $40
- Partner Organizations, $30
- The Community, $10
This revised budget which totals about $400,000 per village per year is only applicable to Millennium Villages that receive new donor support. Consequently, most Millennium Village budgets remain at the $120 per capita level. Millennium Promise is currently planning for Phase II of the MV project, which will have reduced Millennium Promise-mobilized support.
Community-led and nationally-supported
Critical to the success of the Millennium Villages is the principle that communities must be enabled to lead in their own development. The project empowers local groups to identify their community’s pressing problems, set responsibilities for developing practical and cost effective solutions, and design initiatives that can be locally managed.
All of the Millennium Villages were selected in close consultation with host governments and communities. At the national, district, and local levels, governments are providing significant in-kind contributions and support for the implementation of the Millennium Villages. Governments are also working with the project to identify lessons learned and scale up their applications to reach additional communities. Ensuring that the Millennium Villages can be scaled up as part of national development strategies and agreeing on cost-sharing responsibilities from the outset ensures that governments are full partners in the project and supports long-term operational sustainability.
Stories of Progress
In the Millennium Villages today, where once there was pervasive hunger and subsistence farming, farmers are now producing bumper crops. Crop surpluses help supply school feeding programs which have sparked a major increase in school enrollment, and simultaneously help to decrease rates of malnutrition. Malaria incidence has fallen dramatically in many villages through the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and strengthening of basic health systems.
The progress achieved by the Millennium Village communities is catalyzing tremendous enthusiasm among local and national policy leaders for expanding the project and building upon its early success. The Millennium Village approach and lessons learned can be applied to the village, district, and national levels.
Millennium Promise is pleased to share the first report on midterm results from the Millennium Villages project. Entitled "Harvests of Development in Rural Africa: The Millennium Villages After Three Years," the report affirms the impact of an integrated set of simple, low-cost interventions as a means to achieve sustainable rural development. This report - the first of several such reports to be published over the next few months - also documents the significant gains that have been made in each sector across five of the Millennium Villages.
