Millennium Village

This article deals with the concept of the UN Millennium Villages; on Welthungerhilfe's Millennium Villages, see Millenniumsdorf (Welthungerhilfe) .

The UN Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Villages Project called Project of the Millennium Villages (Engl. Millennium Villages ) comprises 12 village groups with about 80 villages in Africa , where the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations are to be implemented by way of example. It is being conducted under the direction of Jeffrey Sachs from the Earth Institute at Columbia University , the US organization Millennium Promise, and the United Nations Development Program .

concept

The villages receive extensive development aid in the areas of food / agriculture, education, health and infrastructure of 110 US dollars per capita over a period of five years , of which 70 US dollars are provided by international donors and 40 US dollars by local authorities and the villagers themselves . This corresponds to Sachs' theory, according to which development cooperation should start at the same time in all problem areas (“integrated development”). It works closely with local authorities and the affected population. The aid should have a lasting effect beyond the five years , the experience in the Millennium Villages should benefit the further implementation of the Millennium Goals. The implementation of the project began in 2004 in Sauri in western Kenya .

Location of the places

The villages are located in 12 different agroecological zones of Africa, each in poor regions of their countries. It is a matter of

• Sauri in the west and Dertu in the east of Kenya ,
• Koraro in Northern Ethiopia ,
• Ruhiira in Uganda ,
• Mayange in Rwanda ,
• Mbola in Tanzania ,
• Mwandama in Malawi ,
• Potou on the Senegal coast ,
• Tiby in the south and Toya in the north of Mali ,
• Pampaida in the north and Ikaram in the southwest of Nigeria and
• Bonsaado in Ghana .

Effects

While the initiators of the Millennium Villages speak of significant successes that would have resulted from before-and-after comparisons, comparisons with the progress made by non-Millennium neighboring villages show significantly more modest successes. According to scientists, an analysis of the impact of the Millennium Villages is impossible for the following reasons: The treatment villages, like the villages in the control group, were not selected at random, there are no baseline data for the control group, the number of samples is very small, and the time frame is very short. The journalist Nina Munk accompanied the project for a total of six years - according to her own information, initially with enthusiasm. In her book "The Idealist", however, she draws an increasingly skeptical portrait of Jeffrey Sachs and describes the conditions in the Millennium Villages she visited after the end of the project as desolate.

Web links

• Millennium Villages Project website
• Overview of the villages with agroecological zones
• Overview page
• Report by the Canadian journalist and book author Nina Munk

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Clemens & Gabriel Demombynes (2010): When Does Rigorous Impact Evaluation Make a Difference? The Case of the Millennium Villages - Working Paper 225, Center for Global Development.
2. ↑ Nina Munk: The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty. Doubleday, New York 2013