“The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) —billed to demonstrate that the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved in rural villages — is nearing its end date of 2015. What lessons can the development community learn from this high-profile initiative?”   Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar visited one MVP site in Western Kenya and offers this analysis. He also spoke with celebrity economist and visionary behind MVP, Jeffrey Sachs.   Think you know everything there is to know about MVP? Click and take a look…

1. Credit: Millennium Promise
Quick facts about the
Millennium Villages
Featuring exclusive pictures from a Devex reporting
trip to the Sauri Millennium Village in Kenya

2. Credit: Millennium Promise
“The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) —billed to demonstrate that the Millennium Development Goals can be
achieved in rural villages — is nearing its end date of 2015. What lessons can the development community
learn from this high-profile initiative?”
Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar visited one MVP site in Western Kenya and offers this analysis.
He also spoke with celebrity economist and visionary behind MVP, Jeffrey Sachs.
Think you know everything there is to know about MVP? Click and take a look…

3. Credit: Devex
To date, 10 African countries are home to core Millennium Villages — those directly supported by the nonprofit
Millennium Promise and Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Around a dozen other countries host or are
starting projects that have adopted the Millennium Villages model. According to Sachs, MVP is now “in 23
countries in Africa and expanding rapidly.

4. Credit: Millennium Promise
A Millennium Village can be a standalone or a cluster of villages. Of the 15 core Millennium Villages, SADA
(Savannah Accelerated Development Authority), in northern Ghana, has the largest coverage, with 34 villages.

5. Credit: Devex
Here are the 15 core Millennium Villages: Koraro, Ethiopia; Bonsaaso, Ghana; SADA Ghana; Dertu, Kenya; Sauri
Kenya; Gumulira, Malawi (completed in 2011); Mwandama, Malawi; Tiby, Mali; Toya, Mali (completed in 2011);
Ikaram, Nigeria (completed in 2011); Pampaida, Nigeria; Mayange, Rwanda; Potou, Senegal; Mbola, Tanzania;
Ruhiira, Uganda.

6. Credit: Devex
All Millennium Villages are situated in distinct agro-ecological zones which together account for 90 percent of
all farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa.

7. Credit: Millennium Promise
MVP has reached around 525,000 people composing more than 92,000 households across its 15 sites.

8. Credit: Millennium Promise
Millennium Promise does not directly implement the project but provides it with technical and operational
advice and, at times, monitoring services. Project implementation is “a shared effort among the Millennium
Villages Project, donors, NGOs, local and national governments, and the village community itself.”

9. Credit: Millennium Promise
Among SIDS, Haiti received the largest foreign, aid in 2011, was the first CEO of Millennium Papua
Jeff Flug (pictured shaking hands with children in Tiby Mali, in 2006) at $1.7 billion, followed by
New Guinea ($610.7 million), the Solomon IslandsNeidecker million), Timor-Leste ($283.8
Promise, followed by John McArthur and Peter Neidecker. ($333.8 left in April 2012 but hasn’t been
million) and Cape Ashley Hufft, the chief of staff, helps oversee day-to-day operations of the Millennium
replaced. Currently, Verde ($250.8 million). (Pictured: A Haitian shopkeeper)
Promise.

10. Credit: Devex
To “address the root cause of poverty,” MVP employs what it calls “a holistic, community-led approach to
sustainable development” which focuses on eight areas: food, water and energy, the environment,
technology and innovation, gender equality, mother and child health, education and business
entrepreneurship.

11. Credit: Millennium Promise
Up to 2012, MVP invested $60 in donor funding per person per year (another $60 is provided by the
government). That’s slightly higher than the 2011 per capita foreign aid to Kenya ($59) and nearly half of that
to Rwanda ($113). In 2013, It started winding down support to $40 per person per year. Funding will be at
zero dollars by 2016.

12. Credit: Devex
MVP will close down and will be handed over to local authorities in 2016. As such, though MVP funding ends,
the work is expected to continue. How sustainable MVP programs prove to be after the funding stops is a key
question.

13. Credit: Millennium Promise
The World Bank, U.N. agencies, Japanese and Korean governments, Monsanto, Nestle, GlaxoSmithKline,
Rockefeller Foundation, Lenovo and Ericsson are among the hundreds of MVP partners. Major international
NGOs are notably absent. See the full list here.

14. Credit: Millennium Promise
The Islamic Development Bank has committed financing to scale up MVP in Mali, Senegal and Uganda. The
funding will come in the form of interest-free, long-term loans to these country’s governments.

15. Credit: Millennium Promise
Rwanda is one of the first countries to develop a strategy to expand MVP nationwide. According to Justine
Gatsinzi, deputy director general in charge of the Rwandan Social Protection Program, the government “has
greatly benefited from [the project], which was one of the motivating factors for its Vision 2020 Umurenge
Program as the national scale-up model.”

16. Credit: Nina Munk
Millennium Villages has come in for its share of criticism, much of it focused on how it can measure results
and whether it will prove to be sustainable and scalable. The most recent critique was a book by Nina Munk
(pictured with children at the Ryamiyonga Primary School in Ruhiira, Uganda) — “The Idealist.”

17. Credit: Millennium Promise
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