ISSN 2077-5091

ANNUAL REPORT 2011www.mdgcentre.org

FEEdiNg ThE gROwTh OF ThE FUTURE

e MDG CentreEast and Southern Africa

The Millennium development goals (Mdgs) were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium declaration, signed in September 2000. The eight goals and 21 targets are:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hungerHalve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.

Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.

Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Achieve universal primary educationEnsure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course

of primary schooling.

Promote gender equality and empower womenEliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of

education no later than 2015.

Reduce child mortalityReduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

improve maternal healthReduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio.

Achieve universal access to reproductive health.

Combat hiV/Aids, malaria and other diseasesHave halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/Aids.

Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/Aids for all those who need it.

Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Ensure environmental sustainabilityIntegrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse

the loss of environmental resources.

Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.

Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water

and basic sanitation.

Have achieved, by 2010, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

develop a global partnership for developmentDevelop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system.

Address the special needs of least developed countries.

Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.

Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries.

In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in

developing countries. In cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new

technologies, especially information and communications.

ANNUAL REPORT 2011www.mdgcentre.org

e MDG CentreEast and Southern Africa

A Milestone Moment: Cementing the basics and building for the future .............................................................................

The Road to 2015 ....................................................................................................................................................................

Health ..........................................................................................................................................................................

Gender .......................................................................................................................................................................

Business Development ............................................................................................................................................... Water and Sanitation .................................................................................................................................................

Education ...................................................................................................................................................................

Infrastructure .............................................................................................................................................................

Environment ...............................................................................................................................................................

Agriculture .................................................................................................................................................................

The September Summit: Boosting momentum to scale up our successes on the road to 2015 ........................................

What About Us? A fresh focus on East Africa’s forgotten drylands ..................................................................................

Partnerships ..................................................................................................................................................................... Press Reports .........................................................................................................................................................................

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fOREwORd

A Milestone Moment: Cementing the basics and building for the future

This has been a pivotal year, for the Millennium Develop-ment Goals, for us at The MDG Centre and for the Millennium Villages themselves. It marked the halfway point between the launch of the Millennium Villages Project and 2015, when the global development targets set a decade ago are due to be realised. At the Centre, through our work in the villages, we aim to show how community-led development, with a series of integrated actions, can translate the MDGs into real breakthroughs that can be multiplied to improve millions of lives in the world’s least developed countries. We have seen significant results, and, as you will read in the following pages, we are working hard to shift up a gear as we accelerate towards 2015. Already, seven times more people now sleep each night under an insecticide-treated bed-net, and malaria prevalence is down an aver-age of 60% across the villages. Four in five children are now immunised against measles. Helping farmers with better seeds and fertilisers has doubled staple crop yields, meaning levels of chronic under-nutrition in infants under two is down by 35%, and 80% of children are now offered a meal at school, increasing attendance and learning. In October, we started planning for our newest Millennium Village, in a mining community in Zambia, to which we will

bring our experience and multi-sector interventions that have prompted such success elsewhere.

These are the basics, the building blocks we identified from the genesis of the Project that would create the foundation upon which we could construct real, long-lasting change. This year, we have seen a surge of schemes designed to take us to the next level – new health centres constructed, new pipes laid to bring clean water closer to homes and fields, partnerships with technology companies to allow people even in remote areas to discover the advantages of the Internet. We are determined to set the example, to show governments – rich and poor – that targeted inter-ventions work, and can work on very much larger scales. To keep our momentum going, the team at The MDG Centre has been expanded to include an infrastructure coordinator, an operations manager, and four new staff who were added to the health team. This year we also had the chance to review progress and plan for the future with the release of our first mid-term data analysis.

The second phase of our work, spanning the next five years, aims to bank the progress we have made so far, and boost it with greater focus on technological innovation, business

Koraro’s new community truck on the way to the market

by dr belay begashaw, director

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entrepreneurship and access to microcredit to kick-start self-made economic growth. You will read about a number of schemes where this is really taking off: cassava farmers in Rwanda, banana growers in Uganda, honey sellers in Ethiopia, fish pond owners in Kenya, and more: we have worked with them all to help them run their own businesses, earn their own profits, and – in the long run – remove the need for aid. Many farmers are now organising into coop-eratives to boost competitiveness by increasing the scale of their combined outputs, which increases their bargaining strength at market.

We have also been thrilled by policymakers’ determination to scale up Millennium Villages-type interventions across the region. To highlight two: Kenya’s government is expand-ing The MDG Centre’s philosophies into nine districts in the country’s west, and in Malawi the government is moving towards adopting into its development policies our experi-ences in the two villages there, Mwandama and Gumulira. The other exciting story of the year is the new Drylands Initiative, in partnership with the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA). Six countries in the Horn of Africa have signed up, and several other regional and inter-national development organisations have expressed interest in working with us on its implementations.

An increasingly integral part of our regional effort is the Millennium Cities Initiative, focusing on finding innovative solutions for poverty in Africa’s cities. This project will now be managed by the Centre, aligned with local administra-tions in each of the cities where the Initiative has already started operating: Kisumu in Kenya, Mekele in Ethiopia, Blantyre in Malawi and Tabora in Tanzania.

During 2010 we have started putting in place a decen-tralised management structure, to strengthen the move towards entrenching the running of the Project closer to those it benefits. This will reinforce decision-making at local and regional levels for planning, budgeting, implementa-tion, monitoring and evaluation and resource mobilisation. Structures based at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, and the not-for-profit Millennium Promise in New York will all keep their supporting role, complementing the regional units on issues of international importance related to research, policy development, procurement, fundraising and scientific publication.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of more than 20 partners during the last year, whose assistance is of invaluable importance. Beyond providing the financial strength to allow us to expand our work, their trust and confidence increases our energy to accomplish even more.Foremost among them is the Government of Ireland, which every year since 2005 has consistently supported The MDG Centre with unrestricted funding, which has been used as leverage to access other restricted funds. Despite their current exceptionally difficult domestic economic circum-stances, the Irish government has renewed its pledge to continue helping us, including support for the recently-launched “1,000 Days” initiative to reduce childhood under-nutrition, in partnership with the US government. We see their ongoing commitment as a vivid testimony of their determination to fight poverty and food insecurity around the world.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation continues to help the Centre to boost its dialogue with regional legislators and senior government officials, allowing our ethos increas-ingly to be embedded in new national policy strategies. The Governments of Finland and Israel have helped to fund the Millennium Cities Initiative, and the Government of the Netherlands’ support to its aid arm, SNV, has seconded staff to the Centre on a full-time basis since 2007. Global Devel-opment Group in Australia has given a three-year grant for our work in Dertu, Kenya. Our new Drylands Initiative has been significantly boosted by being partnered with COMESA.We continue to appreciate the support of the World Agrofor-estry Centre in Nairobi, which hosts us.

To all, we extend a heartfelt thank you. Both behind us and ahead of us, the road is long. And it is not without its speed bumps and road blocks. At the same time as accelerating our focus on innovation and entrepreneur-ship, we are determined not to let slide the gains made in core sectors. You will see that we open our report with chap-ters on health and on gender. At the MDG Summit in New York in September, there was a major push to boost progress on women’s and children’s health when governments, the private sector, foundations, international organisations, civil society and research organisations together pledged more than $40 billion in resources over the next five years. In coming to its final declaration, the General Assembly was able to draw on the great progress made in the Millennium Villages. It was recognised that our approach of integrating interventions is a model that works, and that can be scaled up to work at national levels as well. This, finally, is our ultimate goal, on which you will see we are focused as we prepare to enter the final straight to 2015: that the successes we have already achieved, and will go on to achieve, speak for themselves. Already, many people are listening.

Children learn how to surf the internet in a new computer lab

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ThE ROAd TO 2015

Progress made across all development sectors in 2010

From the outset in the Millennium Villages, our innovative approach has been based on the fundamental idea that progress will be accelerated if each development sector works in tune with the next. Building schools and hiring teachers has less impact if children are too hungry to learn. Constructing processing plants for farm produce needs to happen alongside road repairs so goods can reach market quickly. You will see in the following pages a presentation of

the work each of our sectors has focused on during the last 12 months. You will see that each has made significant prog-ress, and that foundations laid in the last five years have given us a solid platform on which to build for the coming years, as we head to 2015. Each sector is as crucial to the whole as the next – and you will see that our core principals of multi-sector, integrated interventions still lies at the heart of our work.

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Reducing preventable deaths from treatable illnesses and improving health, especially that of mothers and young children, have been priorities across all Millennium Villages since the project’s outset. Already, malaria prevalence in our sites has dropped on average by 50%, and chronic malnutrition in children under two is down by 30%. The focus has been on making it easier to access basic clinical services, improving the prevention and treatment of common diseases, strengthening antenatal and post-natal care, and advising on better nutrition. Together, these activities will help to achieve the fourth, fifth and sixth Millennium Development Goals, related to reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases.

The aim is to ensure that each aspect of the whole health system functions at its full capacity. The MDG Centre’s health sector team has reviewed the systems in place in the villages – including service delivery, the health workforce and avail-ability of medical products such as vaccines – and worked to improve each. The most critical aspect is keeping standards of clinical care consistently high. In 2010, we brought in new advisers specialising in HIV/Aids, nutrition, and maternal

hEALTh

healthy Growth: helping communities boost their health

and child health. We have also been joined by two clinicians from the British National Health Service, who are helping to improve supply chains for health commodities.

HealtHy motHers, HealtHy babies

Following from our earlier successes, our focus in 2010 has been on streamlining the ways health services for women and children are delivered, improving their quality, and on ensuring that communities are aware that care is now available close to their homes. In the past, decent health facilities were often far away, but all villages now have programmes designed to reach even the most remote communities – most notably in Dertu, Kenya, where health outreach is now available even to nomadic communities. In Mayange, Rwanda, and Ruhiira, Uganda, there are five new health posts – facilities for basic care, including antenatal services and child health care, like immunisations. In Mbola, Tanzania, a reproductive health team offering long-term family planning services rotates weekly to all five primary health care facilities.

Millions of women die each year during pregnancy and childbirth, nine in ten of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because complications can quickly become life-threatening, we have helped to upgrade existing health facilities, provide supplies and equipment, and give training to enable timely access to emergency obstetric and neonatal care. There have been some striking successes already. In Mayange, 96.2% of births in 2009 were attended by a skilled health worker, compared to 66.5% in 2006. In Ruhiira, the improvement is even greater: five times more births in 2009 were profes-sionally supervised than in 2006.

Our aim is to have all village health facilities operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we are building staff housing, for example, to make this possible. Ambulances have also been provided to carry emergencies to larger health centres. At the Kabuyanda Health Centre in Ruhiira, for example, upgrades have included a community ambulance, a fully functioning operating theatre, a blood bank and

Midwife with a mother and a baby at the Kabuyanda health facility

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ultrasound equipment, making it the referral centre for all maternity care across the village.

Angelica Kyasiimere is one of 25 mothers whose babies are born through caesarean section each month at Kabuyanda health centre. “My labour was so obstructed, if Millennium were not here, I know I would have died without a child,” she said. “But instead I am alive and have a beautiful baby girl.”

Sylivia Kanyesigye, 35, lost a lot of blood during the birth of her fifth child, but was given a transfusion at the health cen-tre. “I was feeling very tired and weak, I don’t know what would have happened to me if it was not for the ambulance that rushed me to Kabuyanda,” she said. “I was immedi-ately taken for an operation. When I see my child in my arms after surviving death, I thank God for the services brought by the Millennium Villages Project.”

The experiences of these two mothers illustrate that care previously available only in larger health centres or hospitals can be effectively and efficiently implemented at all levels.

tHe “golden minute”: Keeping babies alive

Mothers are not the only ones at risk during and soon after childbirth. Two-fifths of the 8.8 million children worldwide who die annually before their fifth birthday are newborns. To tackle this, during 2010 we trained our staff in a variety of newborn resuscitation methods. Many have now learned the internationally-recognised Helping Babies Breathe approach, which focuses on “the golden minute” and teaches skills easily applied at primary care level in facilities with limited resources. In Koraro, Ethiopia, 33 birth attendants, 22 health extension workers and 11 nurses were given HBB training,

and 364 community health workers were taught about neonatal resuscitation. Within six months, the lives of 33 newborn babies had been saved. Separately, we are see-ing significant successes with continuing immunisation programmes. In Mayange, immunisation coverage is now at 91%.

In Malawi, a national measles epidemic affected chil-dren living in Mwandama less severely because a higher percentage had been immunised, and because the commu-nity knew the symptoms to look for and where to go to find help quickly.

breaKing tHe CyCle: stopping motHers passing Hiv to tHeir babies

During 2010, we strengthened our partnership with UNAIDS on “Mother to Child Transmission-Free Zones”. The project is operating in five of the worst affected countries, where we have trained health workers and upgraded infrastructure. In each of the five sites, there is now at least one health facility offering full Prevention of Mother To Child Transmis-sion (PMTCT) services, ranging from testing of pregnant women to treatment of mothers and their families. In Sauri, Kenya, nearly all pregnant women are now tested for HIV and offered counselling, compared to less than half in 2008. Every woman who attended antenatal clinics in Ruhiira has been tested. Once an expectant mother tests positive for HIV, early preventative programmes can be launched to stop her unborn baby becoming infected. Further tests are carried out once the baby is born, as early infant diagnosis allows anti-retroviral treatments to be started as soon as possible.

To reduce new HIV infections, we have expanded door-to-door testing among women of reproductive age and for the general community. More men are being tested: in Mbola, for example, 80 of the 81 women who came to be tested in July were accompanied by their partners. Alongside measures to stop mothers who fall pregnant passing HIV to their babies, we are also advising on family planning to reduce unintended pregnancies.

2006 - Baseline

2009 - Mid-term

Dertu

4.7%

42.6%

Ruhiira

8.5%

42.4%

Mayange

66.5%

96.2%

Proportion of births attended by skilled health workers

Sister Fortunate, a midwife in Kabuyanda

Women getting HIV/Aids tests in Mbola A healthy newborn baby in Sauri

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Despite these successes, there are still challenges. There is a lack of kits to test for HIV, for early infant diagnosis, and for CD4 counts, crucial in monitoring HIV. This will be addressed in the coming years. All facilities within the villages will be upgraded to offer the full package of PMTCT services, including treatment for HIV+ mothers and their families and collection of dry blood samples for early infant diagnosis and CD4 counts.

growing suCCesses: gains made witH better nutrition

Eating well, and eating a variety of foods, both have great impacts on general health. More families in the Millennium Villages now have reliable access to food and have diversi-fied their diets, and vaccinations and access to safe water and hygiene have all been improved. We continue to encour-age exclusive breastfeeding for a baby’s first six months, to monitor their growth, and to educate parents about better nutrition, Vitamin A supplements and the use of zinc and oral rehydration therapy during bouts of diarrhoea.

There are now school meals programmes in 13 of all 14 Millennium Villages operating in Sub-Saharan Africa which together now feed more than 80,000 children. Some schools have established kitchen gardens growing a wide-range of

nutritious plants, and we hope to encourage these schemes to expand. In their fields, farmers are growing new crops which are more nutritious, including soy beans, groundnuts, pumpkins, mango and papaya, and are bringing more of these ingredients into their family meals. Some have begun to rear dairy cows, keep chickens or farm fish, all with the aim of adding more nutrition into their diets.

Already, there has been quantifiable success: only a third of children under two who have been involved in a series of interventions across the MVP sectors are now chronically malnourished, compared to more than half before our work started.

unsung Heroes: Community HealtH worKers

From the beginning, the Community Health Worker (CHW) Programme has been central to the Millennium Villages. These are paid professionals, who come from the commu-nities they serve and are an integral part of each village’s health service. They play a critical role in helping families who have in the past struggled to find medical care, and we have seen that they have a particular impact on reducing child mortality and deaths during pregnancy and childbirth. During 2010, we stepped up training for community health workers in all sites. The focus was on child health and mal-nutrition, the use of zinc and oral rehydration salts in diar-rhoea cases, on rapid malaria testing for children with fever, and on the appropriate treatment. This improved training has a strong emphasis on more accurate diagnoses, and on managing patient care at the household level.

In the coming months, the programme will focus on further boosting the quality of health services offered by commu-nity health workers, largely by strengthening supportive supervision and making sure they are not overloaded with work. At the same time, we are working at national levels to persuade governments to see the potential that community health workers have to carry out some curative activities in village households, for example testing for malaria and giving treatment.

A community health worker visits a family in Ruhiira

School meals for children

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using teCHnology to improve HealtH Care

Community health workers have been instrumental in roll-ing out new technologies which allow accurate recording of patients’ medical histories. Storing information and beingable to retrieve it quickly has been a great challenge in many rural health centres. At the MVP, we are now using two innovative technologies to store patient records. The first, ChildCount+, allows community health workers to use text messages from their mobile phones to send information to a secure central database after they carry out home visits. This is monitored, and families can be contacted for follow-up consultations, if they are lagging behind on their child’s immunisation schedule, for example.

We are also now using software called OpenMRS (Medical Records System), for patient record keeping in all villages. Each time a patient visits a health centre, details of the con-sultation are logged and can be easily retrieved when they next visit. Accurate and up-to-date reports can be compiled for our health teams to study, and information on various indicators can be sent to national health ministries. Both systems have now been integrated into one database where each patient is assigned a unique identifier, greatly improv-ing efficiencies in following-up patients for further treatment.

In Sauri, where ChildCount+ was piloted for monitoring malnutrition and immunisation programmes, the impact has been remarkable. More than 97% of children have been immunised since the system was introduced, up from levels below 50% before. In 2010, the scheme was expanded to include Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission projects, allowing ChildCount+ to be used to make sure HIV+ pregnant women attend antenatal clinics.

“The beauty with CC+ SMS facility is that we will able to do registrations remotely,” said Rose Kyomuhangi, a Senior CHW in Ruhiira. “This will eliminate the need to make the strenuous long journey to the health centre where the paper forms will be collected. We will also get instant responses and feedback.”

“Zero stoCK-outs”: managing supply CHains of CruCial mediCines

A key focus during 2010, and in the coming years, will be on managing supply chains. There are significant challenges in making sure enough medical supplies are stocked in health centres, including inefficient systems, long lead times and a lack of funding. In 2010, we extended our partner-ship with Britain’s National Health Service South Central. Two NHS clinicians based in Nairobi are now working with health officials in Sauri and Mbola to upgrade their systems so that there are no longer times when stocks of essential medicines – including childhood vaccinations, anti-malarials or antiretroviral drugs – run out. The way supply chains currently operate is being reviewed and revised so that they work with, and improve on, national systems in each location. New systems are being investigated and hope-fully will be implemented. A key focus will be to train health workers on how to forecast demand for drugs – especially zinc to treat diarrhoea, and family planning materials – so that timely and accurate orders are placed. This ensures that there is a continuous flow of supplies sourced from government stocks, donations and purchased commodities.

A lab technician at work in Dertu’s health centre

Drugs are supplied to a patient at the Mbola health centre

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The partnership with the NHS began in 2009, when NHS staff held a “TB Day” in Mbola, alongside the village’s community health workers. More than 80 people came to be assessed and were started on treatment as necessary. The concept was so successful that it is now being rolled out across the cluster and will be held at regular intervals, and it was used as a case study at the annual conference of the World Organ-isation of Family Doctors (Wonca) in Mexico in May 2010.

looKing aHead: building even HealtHier Communities

Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are still alarmingly off-track to achieve the fourth and fifth MDGs, which aim to reduce childhood mortality by two-thirds, and maternal mortality by three-quarters, by 2015. With this in mind, the Millennium Villages Project has determined to demonstrate that sustainable progress is possible even among the most vulnerable of populations, using our pioneering integrated approach – where many different development activities contribute to overall progress. To keep reducing maternal mortality, for example, this means having a community

“We have been delighted and proud to be part of the MDG work in Tanzania and Kenya. We are so pleased that UK healthcare professionals are helping to make a difference, but we are also

very grateful. All of our visiting ‘fellows’ report huge learning that they take

from Africa which makes them better nurses, therapists, midwives, doctors

and managers when they return home. It is truly a win-win.”

Peter Lees, medical director and director of leadership at NHS South Central

health worker who monitors expectant mothers at home, and encourages them to attend antenatal clinics. It means having a trained midwife present with the right equipment when babies are born and an ambulance on standby to bring the mother to a health facility to deliver her baby, and to transport her to more sophisticated facilities in case of emergency. It means making sure that women do not have to pay at the point of need for giving birth under profes-sional supervision. And it means gathering information and data from our activities that are recorded accurately, in ways that can later be accessed quickly to help us improve further.

The main focus for the coming 12 months will be on in-creasing access to quality maternal and newborn care in the community and at health facilities, encouraging demand for family planning services, accelerating efforts to create zones free of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and achieving universal coverage for essential childhood immunisations. We will also seek to strengthen partnerships with govern-ments, international agencies and the private sector.

Doctor Ruben Orucha treats patients at the Mbola health centre

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Programmes designed to achieve the third Millennium Development Goal – to promote gender equality and empower women – cut across a number of different sectors in the Millennium Villages, and there have been a series of significant steps to success taken during 2010. Specifically, the aim is to make sure there is the same proportion of girls as boys in all levels of education by 2015, and to increase the share of women earning income from jobs that are not only in the agricultural sector. Recent efforts of The MDG Centre’s gender programme have been centred on ensuring more girls stay on beyond primary school, teaching them about sexual and reproductive health and prevention of HIV, as well as investing in infrastructure that reduces the time women and girls spend on daily chores. Programmes designed to stop violence against women and girls were also integrated. Our immediate focus in the last 12 months has been on the economic empowerment of women, and increasing their skills, knowledge and training on business enterprise.

GENdER

A Level Playing field: Empowering women and working towards gender equality

At the community level, small numbers of women have been organised into “empowerment groups” that provide social and financial support to group members. In Ruhiira, Uganda, Twinomuhwezi Fausta, a sub-county councillor, helped to set up a new women’s empowerment group with 36 members. Each contributes money monthly, and then they can apply for small loans as and when they are needed. “Thanks to this, the women are themselves now in charge,” said Tusingwire Hilda, the gender coordinator in Ruhiira. Learning how to save money and how to manage loan repayments are among skills necessary for women to increase their wealth. In many areas, however, women are as yet unable to read and write properly. In Ruhiira, the Functional Adult Literacy programme (FAL) was initiated, where the emphasis is on the ‘functional’ aspect – equipping women (and men) with the vital skills needed for daily life.

“Before joining the FAL classes, I struggled with my business as I didn’t know how to read and write. Today, I can do both,” said Tumushabe Boneconcila, a successful businesswoman who runs a restaurant selling simple lunches. “The classes have also taught me about school fees management and ways to stimulate my business.” Mrs Boneconcila, like many women in Ruhiira, saves money in the Ruhiira Millennium Sacco, a village bank established and managed by a women’s group, with support from the Millennium Villages Project.

Tumushabe Boneconcila cooks matooke (banana) lunch in her restaurant

“When people give me money, I can count it, keep a record, and maintain

accountability. For me - and my business - that is a great achievement as now

no-one can cheat me.”

Tumushabe Boneconcila,restaurant owner

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daily supplies of water for their families. But the only usable source used to be two-and-a-half hours walk away, taking these women and girls away from their fields, their class-rooms and their homes for up to five hours each day.

“Even then, the amount of water I collected was not enough to satisfy the daily consumption of my whole family, leave alone the diseases caused by the dirty water that used to affect them,” said Hadas Mariam, a 33-year-old mother from Koraro.

Finally, we have established and strengthened “Girls’ Clubs” in all 22 schools in Koraro. These can act as the first point of call for community campaigns and to raise awareness on the dangers of early marriages, to give health advice and help with other situations. As a result, we have seen the numbers of girls dropping out of school, or having to repeat classes, decreasing significantly. Our priorities into 2011 will focus on business enterprise development for women, as the project moves to the second phase and the 2015 MDG deadline nears. In addition to eco-nomically empowering women, this intervention will ensure that gains made in equitable education and skills training are sustained, and ease the eventual phasing out of outside assistance to the Millennium Villages.

It is this level of financial independence – and the ability to make decisions on new investments – which helps women to expand their businesses and increase family income. In Sauri, Kenya, Jennifer Akinyi Awuor, a widow with 10 chil-dren, is an exemplary champion of this. MVP staff helped teach her how to manage a tree nursery. Now she has a thriving nursery of her own, selling seedlings to customers for less than 10 US cents. Her profits have allowed her to invest in a dairy cow, three sewing machines, new furniture for her house and a mobile phone to ease business com-munications. She has managed to extend piped water to her doorstep to irrigate her seedlings and for her own house-hold consumption. By selling clean water to her neighbours, she makes enough money in just four days to pay her entire monthly water bill. Earnings from the rest of the month are profit. Mrs Akinyi has embraced the culture of saving, and said her aim is to save enough money to buy land so that she can move out of her husband’s parents’ compound and build a house for her own family.

Across the Millennium Villages, great efforts have been made to ensure the equal participation of women in all develop-ment activities. In Koraro, Ethiopia, for example, all projects have been directly or indirectly designed to reduce the ex-cessive daily workload which falls on women. In 2010, they were provided with agricultural materials such as fertiliser, vegetable seeds, hand tools and training. More than half of the villagers who helped build a dam to trap water were women, and they make up at least half of all members sitting on various project and development committees, ensuring that their voices are heard whenever any decisions are made about future plans for the village.

One of those decisions in 2010 was to prioritise the instal-lation of a constant supply of clean water in Koraro. It is the responsibility of the women and girls in the village to fetch

“Now, our daughters are properly attending their education and there

is good improvement on their academic performance.“

Hadas Mariam, a mother from Koraro

Training session in Dertu on female hygiene

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The first Millennium Development Goal includes the demand to eradicate poverty. To achieve this, small-holder farmers must move away from their historical reliance on subsistence agriculture and transform into entrepreneurs whose crops and diversified activities earn more than just the bare mini-mum for survival. As we work towards 2015, the Millennium Villages Project’s business development sector will focus on helping to transform subsistence farming into commercial agriculture. This strategy is based on the premise that boost-ing local business gives communities new long-term ways to help pay for their own needs in the future.

Small-scale farmers have struggled with poor infrastructure, a lack of adequate or innovative training, poor institutional structures and difficulties accessing credit. It is a fact that not all farmers are entrepreneurs, and business requires new skills. To bring about the necessary changes – simul-taneously addressing both the supply and demand sides of food production – we have focused on helping farmers set up cooperatives to pool resources, knowledge and, of course, produce. Together, farmers can learn how to grow high-value crops using improved seeds and irrigation, raise livestock to earn more money and access loans at competitive rates to buy equipment and tools. They can be taught about regu-latory legislation and certification, and can better organise their access to the private sector. The MVP will leverage its partnerships with private companies to establish strong con-nections between small farmers and big private companies.

To build upon our earlier success, in 2010 our teams aimed to strengthen the skills of village enterprise groups, and to increase output and “add value” to produce. At the same time, there has been an increased focus on building-up microfinance schemes and working on creating sustained connections to new markets.

building Cooperation, building businesses

In Mwandama, Malawi, a cooperative was organised to take the lead in producing and processing cassava. High-yielding cassava stems were provided to 2,000 farmers and two

bUsiNEss dEvELOPMENT

Unleashing Entrepreneurs: Expanding business in the Millennium villages

cassava bakery groups have been established in Katete to be staffed by women who have already banded together to start making bricks to for the bakery. At the same time, training sessions were held to enhance production and processing, and on marketing for the finished goods.

The KOTKA cooperative in Mayange, Rwanda, consists of 450 cassava farmers who have hired professional staff to help run their new processing plant, earning the group more than $9,000 in profit from 46 tonnes of milled flour during 2010.

“The cassava farmers will be able to sell their fresh produce to the plant and this will help them to avoid hard work of processing cassava in traditional ways,” said Ndahayo Celestin, president of KOTKA. The plant employs a team of 17 women to peel the fresh cassava that farmers deliver daily.

Historically, it was difficult for farmers to find the true cost of their goods at far-away markets, and they were forced to accept whatever price traders and middlemen offered them. In Ruhiira, Uganda, a unique series of interventions was designed to shorten the supply chain between farmers’ cooperatives and those who eventually buy their matooke, the area’s primary cash crop. Alongside road repairs to ease transport costs, cell-phone networks were strengthened so farmers could access real-time market prices in the capital city, Kampala.

Cassava flour production at Mayange’s new plant

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Since then, banana prices in the cooperative have doubled, and the number of banana marketing groups has soared to 35, each with roughly 30 members. One, the Kigarama Banana Marketing Group, has pooled its monthly member-ship fee, making loans available to members when the need arises. One farmer in the group recently took a loan to buy a motorcycle which his son is using to run a successful taxi business. “This is how individuals can develop when they work in groups,” said Namara Peace, the marketing groups’ field coordinator. “Before the MVP, there was no business spirit. But now people in all groups are motivated to work harder and as a result they have built permanent houses, bought more land, and set up new businesses.”

Kigarama Banana Marketing Group has also built a grain warehouse facility to store crops after they are harvested. We are encouraging this concept across all Millennium Villages, because it allows farmers to sell their produce when the price is high. We help them to form community organi-sations to manage purchasing, quality control, bulking and banking of the grains and cereals, and to sell them at the market’s peak. Previously, they sold their produce just after harvest at near-throw-away prices, only to go hungry a few months later, by which time the price of their own food in the hands of middlemen had more than doubled.

The New Yala Dairy Cooperative in Sauri, Kenya, hopes to expand the 100 litres of milk a day that it pasteurises to as much as 1,500 litres a day. The Sauri Enterprise Team has worked with the cooperative to develop a business plan to boost its credentials as a sustainable commercial venture by growing fodder, investing in livestock to increase yields, sharing profits to encourage more farmers deliver to the dairy and inviting farmers outside the cooperative to bring their milk to the dairy.

small loans to boost small businesses

Private banks and lending institutions have traditionally shied away from risking loans for people in remote rural areas with low incomes. During 2010, we have strengthened part-nerships with the growing number of financial groups of-fering microloans, moving us away from systems based on handing out grants, to those developing credit as a way to access funding.

The Mayange Community Development Fund, launched by the MVP, has already distributed $34,000 in loans to 93 business people, alongside the local Urwego Opportunity Bank and the community Savings and Credits Cooperative (Sacco), which now serves 25,000 people in the area, with our support.

Mukakalisa Mediatrice, a 42-year-old weaver, used to have to walk more than 10 miles to find even basic financial

services. “Now I have the Sacco less than a mile away, the services are great, and I am no longer suffering by having to walk far,” she said.

It is a similar story in Mbola, Tanzania. By helping with the registration processes, training board members and advis-ing on credit management police, we supported the com-munity there to set up a Sacco after they tired of having to travel more than 20 miles to find the nearest commercial bank, which often refused credit. Now the Mbola Millennium Sacco has 364 members, and aims to attract 6,000 people to deposit money to boost the fund’s loan-giving.

In Ruhiira, the MVP helped strengthen RUTWA, a local women’s organisation, with starting capital of roughly $20,000, furniture, a safe and salaries for four staff for the first year. Now it has moved beyond offering credit to its members alone, and today has 1,034 people on its books and total capital of almost $90,000. There are four types of loan available – agricultural, business, school fees, and emergency – all with different repayment schemes.

Women handling beans sold under the WFP partnership

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“There is a high demand for food prod-ucts from organisations such as UNHCR and World Food Programme, as well as

from good local schools, and these are the clients whom we hope to attract. Once our

income levels begin to rise as a result, not only will we be in a position to widen our markets further, we also hope to add

value by investing in machinery which can mill our maize into flour.”

Sedruc Kakama, chairman of the Kigarama Banana Marketing Group in Ruhiira

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“We take into account people’s needs and circumstances depending on the loan,” said Florence Kakiiza, the Sacco’s Chairwoman. “In general, repayment is excellent, although the women are without a doubt the most reliable.”

Thanks to help from the MVP and others including Micro Columbia, the Sacco can afford to lend at exceptionally low rates of just 2.5% per month - with RUTWA members enjoying an even lower rate of 1.8% per month. Average rates at commercial banks are as high as 10%. “Our primary concern is to ensure that loans are affordable for all, so

keeping interest rates low is very important to us,” Mrs Kakiiza added. With new readily-available loans, Ruhiira’s women are improving their banana plantations, diversifying by buying goats and cattle, establishing small hotels and businesses, and paying school fees. These are women who understood that, after MVP did the groundwork, it was up to them to take the initiative to best harness and build on the extraordinary outputs resulting from that first kick-start.

innovations tHat unleasH new entrepreneurs

This entrepreneurial spirit allows us to identify innova-tive income generating activities which diversify farmers’ incomes away from relying on subsistence agriculture. In several Millennium Villages, new businesses in beekeeping or rearing poultry were introduced. In Koraro, Ethiopia, more than 1,200 new bee colonies have been established. With our support, 213 farmers in 11 villages have signed up to new businesses breeding silk worms, and 80 women have been trained in managing dairy cows, poultry production, fattening animals and trading textiles and grains. In Mbola, new beekeeping groups were given 48 beehives and kits, and are soon expected to be selling more than 1,900 litres of honey a year, earning $2,100. Other cooperatives have been formed and trained to keep poultry, and 800 chickens supplied - from this initial capital investment of $2,000, an-nual revenue is expected to be more than $4,500. We helped 25 women form the Mayange Pigs Farmers Cooperative, which has increased its livestock from six pigs to 36 in six months, and two farmers in Mayange began a pilot poultry farming scheme this year. They were so successful – earning 10% profit over their initial investment – that the project was expanded to a further 33 farmers, who together now have more than 4,000 chickens. “I plan to do better for the future as now I have the required techniques,” said Bariyanga Canisius, 58, who made a net profit of $66 in his first six weeks of operation rearing one-day chicks.

Creating ConneCtions: linKing farmers to new marKets

People still need a market to sell to, and must regularly supply that market with produce of consistent quality. Crop yields have doubled in many Millennium Villages, and this year we have focused on encouraging construction of grain and cereal banks and on sourcing new markets for crops. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has expand-ed its Purchase For Progress scheme (P4P), buying food at fair prices from farmers in developing countries to fulfil its donation requirements. The Millennium Villages have benefited from that. In Sauri, the Marenyo Cereal bank signed a contract to supply 50 metric tonnes of beans to WFP, earning its 205 members more than $33,000 in 2010. Next year, they plan to diversify by supplying WFP with maize, soy and millet.

Ananias Barihaira is the happy and successful owner of a hotel in Mbola

village voices

Ananias Barihaira, a former teacher from Mbola, borrowed Sacco money to expand

his small restaurant, the Twihangane Hotel, which he runs with his wife.

His increased income helped him to pay for his children’s education, and his restaurant

is the village’s new central hub.

“My son has even completed university, and another child is currently in secondary school,”

he said. “You can definitely notice a change in the community. There is more of a sense of cooperation and team spirit as people have a reason and a place to come together and

discuss the happenings of the day.”

Mr Barihaira has also been trained in book-keeping, meaning he can better

manage his budget and keep an eye on weekly and monthly profits.

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In Malawi, the Mwandama Grain Bank won a similar con-tract to supply maize to WFP, earning its members $47,500 in 2010. In the coming year, the grain bank will be up-graded and the Mwandama Farmers Cooperative won a USAID Market Linkage Grant to help improve the sorting and grading of commodities, the construction of a storage room, an office and agro-processing factory units...................

Farmers in Ruhiira, whose WFP-bought beans are handed out in refugee camps nearby, will soon benefit from an enhanced Warehouse Receipt System at their commodity store, which ensures year-round financial security. Supplies are accurately audited as they are deposited in the store, where they are kept until being sold when prices are higher. In the past, farmers had to sell their crops as soon as they were harvested, to pay outstanding bills and debts. With the new system, they will be able to access advance credit, with their stored produce as collateral.

innovative partnersHips Have been Created aCross tHe region to boost our new enterprises

• The French Embassy in Nairobi provided solar panels to a school, a cybercafé and a health dispensary at Dertu, Kenya.• The Pilot Light Foundation, USA, gave $22,000 for pig and poultry farming in Mayange, and Urwego Opportunity Bank (UOB) provided 100 loans to businessmen and women there.• Women in Malawi worked with Unilever to distribute the company’s goods door-to-door in rural areas, earning the women $13,000 in turnover and giving them business experience.

Keeping up tHe momentum: next steps to improved business suCCess

There are, of course, still challenges to further enhancing communities’ enterprise activities. Start-up capital for cooperatives is still required, some microfinance institutions charge very high interest rates, and there is a need to rein-force the concept of paying back microloans in places where people are used to a historical culture of hand-outs. There is also a need for more staff in the Business sector at the MVP – which will be an emphasis this year.

There will be a focus on developing training programmes to teach cooperative managers across the region appropriate managerial skills, something to be supported by The MDG Centre, which will subsidise training and starting salaries for up to 20 managers each year starting in 2011. We will work to improve local savings and credit schemes, for enterprises needing as little as $1,000, or as much as $500,000. And we will help boost the private-sector competitiveness of coop-eratives by continuing to search for links with commercial companies and with organisations like WFP, to create an integrated approach to speed up our – already impressive – business development activities.

The millennium honey is a booming business in Sauri

village voices

Regina Nyakalo, a 36-year-old mother of three daughters from Sauri, was paid $281 for the 450kg of beans she supplied for the WFP contract. “Since I was born, this is my

first time to earn such an amount,” she said. “Before, the middlemen used to give us very

low prices for our beans. Now with WFP we get a good price, it has changed

my family life completely.”

She now pays her eldest daughter’s school fees, has roofed her home with modern iron

sheets, and bought a drip-irrigation kit for her tomato plants.

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17

wATER ANd sANiTATiON

health Through hygiene: Expanding clean water supplies and improving sanitation

Access to clean water, like here in Koraro, can save thousands of lives

Providing clean water and adequate sanitation is not a stand-alone Millennium Development Goal – it is an aim which would help achieve almost all of them. Without reliable water, hunger cannot be beaten. Without water sources nearby, women and children waste hours every day collecting supplies. Girls continue to drop out of education if there are no toilets in schools, and without proper hygiene, diseases go on spreading, killing children and making moth-ers sick. Unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene contribute to 88% of diarrhoeal deaths, and 4,000 children under the age of five die every day as a result of diarrhoeal diseases. Remarkably, simple hygiene practices such as hand washing with running water and soap after going to the toilet can cut diarrhoea diseases by 60%.

At the Millennium Villages Project, we are working on both improving water supply and quality – which tends to receive more international attention – and encouraging better hygiene and sanitation. Research shows that while clean drinking water is preferred, teaching hand-washing tech-niques, and installing better toilets to stop diseases spread-ing can have an even greater impact on improving health.

Our aim is to make sure everyone has access to 20 litres of water per day, within a distance 500 meters, from an improved water source serving no more than 400 people. At the same time, there should be an improved sanitation facility, usually a latrine, within 50 metres of every home, and used by no more than 20 people.

During 2010, we worked to build on water, sanitation and hygiene 5-year plans already in place in all villages. These are designed to bring the most cost-effective, and long-lasting improvements to our various sites. The project focuses on three areas: improved water supplies, improved sanitation and hygiene, and improving the chances that interventions last for the long run.

What is Watsan?

• Improved water supplies: Water from

sources such as boreholes, rainwater

harvesting, protected springs, protected

streams and shallow wells, where

inhabitants can easily – physically, socially

and economically – access water.

• Basic sanitation: The lowest-cost

technology for hygienic disposal of

human waste, and a clean and healthy

living environment in homes and villages.

• Improved sanitation: Using improved

facilities and public toilets; ventilated

improved pit (VIP) latrines, pour-flush

toilets, and connection to septic or public

sewer systems.

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To make sure that everyone in the villages can access clean water – at home, at school and in their fields – we have repaired broken boreholes, built new water points at shallow wells fitted with hand-pumps, extended pipes to carry water further, and worked to protect springs from contamination.

InCreased aCCess to improved water supply in millennium villages

In Sauri, Kenya, the MVP and the community have protected a total of 218 springs, supplying more than 26,000 people. Spring protection involves building walls across the spring and directing clean water through pipes, while digging channels to divert contaminated surface water away. People in the village contribute by building fences around the springs to keep animals away.

Bringing clean water close to where people live helps us work towards achieving MDGs on gender equality. Women and children bear the burden of transport of water from source to home. They often cover several kilometres, requir-ing an average of 134 minutes per day – time taken away from education, caring for children, and engaging in produc-tive and civic activities. Studies have found that if total time taken per round trip to collect water exceeds 30 minutes, people tend to collect less water, which compromises their basic drinking needs.

In Koraro, Ethiopia, we installed pipes and taps from a pro-tected spring to three different sites, bringing fresh water closer to almost 6,000 people who used to have to walk more than two hours a day for supplies.

This has had another, perhaps surprising impact, according to Keshi Woldenigus, an elder in Koraro. Families in other villages did not want their daughters marrying men from Koraro, because, “they feared their daughters would be continuously engaged and suffer by fetching water”.

“In their words marriage with this village means sending their daughter for punishment,” Mr Woldenigus said. “Now the problem is solved and our neighbours are giving their daughters for marriage, and our women are able to engage in other works where previously most of their time was consumed by travelling to and fro to fetch water.”

But having clean water easily at hand is only half the battle. It has proven challenging to encourage households to adopt more hygienic facilities in their homes, but we continue to highlight the sanitary dangers of traditional practices. How-ever, significant achievements have been made in schools and health clinics. Now three-quarters of these have improved la-trines – and in schools, we encourage girls’ toilet facilities to be built separately from boys’, giving girls more confidence and reducing days they are away from school.

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In Mayange, a drought-hit part of Rwanda, eight boreholes have been repaired in recent years and the village will be connected to mains water supplies, using almost 8,000 water pipes already waiting to be laid, by 2011. This year, we focused on bringing clean, running water to im-prove sanitation for everyone in the health centre. Before this, doctors, health workers and patients had to go out-side to find the nearest water source. Now three con-sultation rooms and three in-patient wards have taps, and there are new hand-washing stations around the centre’s compound.

Alongside building toilets and hand-basins, we have arranged awareness campaigns to encourage better sani-tation and hygiene, in order to adapt behaviour into the long-term. To help this, water project committees, health surveillance assistants and community health workers have been appointed to manage water points and to monitor and promote better hygiene. The private sector is also involved, to ensure supplies of spare parts and technical services to maintain and repair the water points. In Mwandama, Malawi, the MVP in partnership with Tikonze Mijigo Maintenance

System (TIMMS) trained and equipped local mechanics to service hand-pumps, boreholes and shallow wells. Their work is paid for by the local community, from money earned from people using the water points.

Our focus in the next 12 months, and as we move towards 2015, will be to raise awareness of better hygiene and sanitation, and to continue to increase the reach of clean water points. As the chairwoman of Mwandama’s water point committee, Irene Kajawo, says, the simple fact of clean water, close to home, has multiple benefits.

“Before the construction of this water point, we used to fetch water from a well more than a mile away,” she said.

“This water point near our homes has brought a lot of changes to our lives. First, our kids are no longer late for classes. Second, we have more time with our families, work-ing on the farm and other chores. Third, fetching water is now shared with boys and young ones since they don’t have to go far. And lastly, cholera and other diarrhoea disease outbreaks are a thing of the past in our village.”

Agriculture is made easier with drip irrigation in Sauri

Latrines in Sauri: Before Latrines in Sauri: After

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The chance to stay in school to secondary level – or even to complete primary education – has all too often been beyond the reach of many rural African children. Costs can be too high, families need their children’s help in their fields or to care for younger siblings, or school facilities are inadequate or of poor quality. The second Millennium Development Goal demands that, by 2015, every child should have the oppor-tunity to complete primary schooling. This year, the MVP has worked hard to increase the number of boys and girls going to school, and to keep them there through to the end of primary education. We are also focused on ensuring more continue on to secondary school, while enhancing the qual-ity of education at all levels. We have expanded school infrastructure, introduced school meals programmes, and worked with partners to distribute sanitary pads to improve girls’ daily school attendance. Al-ready, 2,300 girls in Sauri, Kenya, benefit from free sanitary pads, supported by Proctor and Gamble (P&G). Without this, many girls miss a significant number of school days each month when they lack appropriate and hygienic materials to use during menstruation. Giving students a guaranteed meal every day increases their motivation and energy, and the results are clear: for example in Ruhiira, Uganda, primary school enrolment grew from 68% in 2006 to 89% in 2010, as a result of the village’s school feeding programme. Gardens have been planted at many schools to supplement the quantity and nutritional value of ingredients bought jointly by the MVP and parents. As a result, we have seen that more pupils are now taking part in – and completing – primary schooling. All 21,000 children in both nursery and primary schools in Sauri are now eating lunch at school, where ingredients – including maize, beans and vegetables – are mostly locally produced by the pupils’ parents. MVP funding for the pro-gramme has decreased significantly because School Man-agement Committees and parents are now organising food contributions from local farmers. Kitchens at all 31 schools were equipped with energy-efficient stoves, and some

EdUCATiON

Enhancing Quality Education: better learning environments for pupils, professional training for teachers

schools now rear their own poultry, grow vegetables or own dairy cows. All of these activities are aimed at ensuring the sustainability of the school meals programme, in addition to enhancing the nutritional value of the food served.

In Mayange, Rwanda, 192 children at nursery schools are given porridge for breakfast, and the scheme will be expanded in the coming months, while in Koraro, Ethiopia, 1,013 schoolchildren are provided with meals at school. In Mbola, Tanzania, our work has focused on ensuring parents and the community understand the benefits of taking part in the school meals schemes. village governors, in discussions with their community, introduced by-laws setting out agreed fines for people who defaulted on their commitments to the scheme. As in Ruhiira, the direct outcomes of the school meal programme in Mbola are striking: school attendance rose from 60% in 2006 to 96% in 2009. The enrolment rate has gone up from 70% in 2006 to 95% in 2009. The ratio of girls to boys enrolling for school rose from 90% in 2006 to 98% in 2009 – and it is now 1:1. Retention of pupils in school improved by 40%, while academic performance increased by 25%.

School buildings have been constructed or improved in many villages. In Sauri, 51 new classrooms and 70 latrine blocks were built, 26 schools were connected to electricity and computers were installed in 23 schools. In Mayange, two classrooms, a store and an office for the headmaster were built at Mbyo Primary School. Before this, the head-master had to work in the old school store. These efforts have been matched by attempts to increase the numbers of children able to continue school after finishing primary education. Owing to the costs of secondary schooling, much

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“ICT can be a crucial resource for networking with other schools, as it facilitates knowledge sharing and

capacity building.”

Lawrence Ssenkubuge, Ruhiira’s education coordinator

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strengths for a more harmonised system of learning across the project area, and beyond,” Mr Ssenkubuge added.

At present, two of Ruhiira’s schools have ICT facilities, and five more will be installed soon. One of the major ICT schemes established is the ‘School2School’ programme, an online partnership between pupils in Ruhiira and a school in the US. Lenovo, the fourth largest seller of personal comput-ers in the world, has helped the MVP to install computers in schools. In Mayange, three computer laboratories were installed with 10 new computers each. Masho and Megab secondary schools in Koraro shared 50 new computers distributed this year. In the coming 12 months, our education priorities will in-clude continuous community advocacy to ensure all children are enrolled in school and stay there longer, activities to bridge gender gaps in education by increasing the number of girls staying in school, efforts to promote quality of teaching and learning, and support for post-primary education, with a specific focus on secondary schooling, especially for girls.

of our work has been to support scholarships. “This support means that I am no longer having to miss class because I couldn’t pay fees, and this resulted into performing better and getting a government scholarship,” said Marthe Tuy-izere, from Mayange. In Koraro, 40 girls are enrolled on a scholarship programme. In Ruhiira, efforts to improve primary schooling were so suc-cessful that, for the first time, we had girls scoring among the highest grades in final primary school examinations in 2009. To make sure they could continue their education, MVP and Millennium Promise Japan launched a scholarship scheme to pay for 11 girls to attend secondary school. We pay their fees, and continually guide and counsel them to ensure they keep up good grades and do not drop out of class. In Sauri and Mayange, a total of 120 students have won secondary and tertiary education scholarships. It is vital to maintain teacher training and upgrade informa-tion technology facilities, to enhance the quality of teach-ing and learning in schools in all of the Millennium Villages. This year, teachers in Mayange were taught about gender relations, and in Koraro, 66 teachers and 154 parents were involved in sessions to explain how best to manage Parent Teacher Associations. Head-teachers and their deputies in Sauri were trained in school administration and manage-ment, and Ruhiira’s teachers underwent professional devel-opment programmes, in conjunction with district education officers. All of these programmes focused on introducing new skills and techniques, and on refreshing teachers’ knowledge of what they have learned in the past. “The training keeps the teachers up to date with dos and don’ts in educating young people”, said Lawrence Ssen-kubuge, Ruhiira’s education coordinator. “As a teacher my-self, I know that after a while it is easy to take some things for granted.” Understanding how to use computers is vital to ensuring quality education, for teachers and pupils alike. “We can begin to work together as opposed to individually, pooling

A pupil in a new secondary school in Ruhiira

gloBal leaRning –the school2school PRogRaMMe

Pupils at Ruhiira’s Omwicwamba Primary School use their five computers and three

digital cameras to swap stories and pictures with new friends in Whitby School in

Connecticut, USA, during weekly online chats together.

“We talk about many different things,” said Anita, a pupil at Omwicwamba.

“Last time we discussed the environment and how it can be destroyed. It was very interesting as their problems were very

different to ours. While their environment is threatened by air and water pollution,

industrial dumping and congestion, our challenges are things such as deforestation, bush burning and overgrazing. Our counter-parts at Whitby school aren’t just the mzun-gus (whites) anymore, they are our friends.”

Kabagambe Fudier, head of ICT programmes at Omwicwamba added:

“The kids are working harder than ever before because they know there are

tangible rewards for doing so.”

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Africa faces a large deficit in basic infrastructure compared to industrialised countries. This is hampering its potential for growth, its progress towards reducing poverty and its chances to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. For those targets to be met, special efforts are needed so that people can travel roads, benefit from health and school facilities, drink clean water and irrigate fields, and access electricity and information and communication technologies. This has focused attention in the Millennium Villages on expanding rural infrastructure.

By 2015, 90% of the rural population should be within 2km of a transport pick-up point, according to the MDGs. Decent roads are critical to lowering the costs of farming and trad-ing, and to improving access to markets, schools, emergency health clinics and more. In the Millennium Villages, infra-structure, mainly access to roads and electricity, became a central focus in 2010, as the project moved into its second phase. In Koraro, Ethiopia, upwards of 23km of roads are under construction or being maintained, making it easier for villagers to reach primary schools and health facilities.

iNfRAsTRUCTURE

solid investment: The building blocks to progress

Before, they had to walk 30km on rocky paths through the Gheralta mountains to take their goods to market.

“In the past it was hard to travel, but now with the road repaired, we get income, visitors can pass through, and with the improved security of a good quality road, people are safer,children can go to school more easily,” said Ronald Brazio, chairman of the road maintenance team in Mwandama.

At the same time, ongoing building and renovation projects helped boost interventions in health and education. In Mayange, Rwanda, we helped build two health posts and an immunisation centre. At the village’s main health centre, waiting areas and staff quarters were expanded, X-ray equipment was installed, stocks of medicines in the pharmacy were boosted and the whole centre was connect-ed to the national electricity grid. Together, these improved facilities now serve more than 25,000 people. “Now, here where we live, there is antenatal care, fam-ily planning, even an ambulance service. For me and my family, having a big, clean health post here has made us very happy,” said Ntawukirasongwa Francis, 49, a married father with 10 children, from Mayange. In Mbola, Tanzania, patients at Ilolangulu Health Centre will by the end of 2011 have a new operating theatre and laboratory, and we have already renovated four primary schools in the village. Streetlights have been installed along roads leading to the health centre and around the village’s market centre.

Construction teams put finishing touches on the new road running from Koraro to Megab market town

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“The kinds of services which are now close to us, we used to have to travel

much further to find.”

Ntawukirasongwa Francis, 49, who lives close to the new Gakamba

health post in Mayange

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Children at the Chandawe Primary School in Gumulira, Malawi, will soon find their class sizes eased when the con-struction of two new school blocks is finished. In Koraro, 12 new latrines are being built, for the benefit of more than 900 schoolgirls. Until recently, access has been severely limited to clean wa-ter and suitable drainage and sanitation systems, causing preventable illness in many parts of rural Africa. Our projects have been focused on providing water supplies and sanita-tion for schools and health centres. In Koraro, 37 existing water points were overhauled, 20 hand-dug wells and 11 shallow boreholes were sunk, and five new water springs were developed. In the fields surrounding the village, 7km of PVC piping have been installed to irrigate the crops grown by 128 households. Similarly in Sauri, Kenya, two green-houses now have drip-irrigation systems for tomato crops which were previously grown outdoors and watered by hand. In Gumulira, six boreholes were repaired.

Innovations in information technology are, for the most part, concentrated in Africa’s cities. This cuts off the rural poor from learning about advances in farming techniques, mod-ern teaching methods or fresh approaches to health care. To combat this, we aim to bring information and communication

Recharging LED lights in Mayange, to find alternative ways to light homes and businesses

The new junior primary school in Gumulira has plenty of room for all students

Having this bridge means improved health care and food transport for the residents

technologies to all villages. At the primary school and at the market in Mwandama, Malawi, work started to instal solar power ahead of the delivery of computers, expected in 2011.Solar power is not just for computers – it can be harnessed to power refrigerators in health centres to keep medicines fresh, to light schools so learning can continue after sunset, and to bring electricity to people’s homes.

Alongside solar power stations, many villagers were con-nected to the national power grids in their countries for the first time in 2010. In Mbola, Ilolangulu Health Centre staff buildings, Ilolangulu Secondary School and Mabama Prima-ry School will all be hooked to mains electricity by the end of 2010. Alongside the national power supply, solar power mini stations are planned in the villages, where several sets of solar units will be procured and connected to village households. In Mayange, 200 households were hooked up to electricity, and work continues to connect another 1,300 households. In Sauri, 30 households now link directly to the national grid, with 70 more to go. The same approach will be taking place in Ruhiira, where the electric grid will be extended to water-pumping stations, schools, health and trading centres. In Mayange, where there is no nearby national power, villagers were given banks of Light-Emitting Diode (LED) lights, which are cheap, safe, and can be recharged using pedal-power.

infoRMation technology in MBola

• Since July, 76 out of 147 primary and secondary school teachers have been given ICT training

• Five modems have been installed in schools

• Two modems have been installed in a health dispensary

• Mobile network was expanded and mobile telephones provided to community health workers in remote areas

• Plans continue for a community radio station in the village’s “innovation centre”, currently under construction

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The aim of the seventh Millennium Development Goal – to ensure environmental sustainability – cuts across many oth-er areas of focus of the Millennium Villages. Despite this, we have made great efforts to combat the key environmental challenges facing many of the project locations: degraded land, deforestation, diminishing biodiversity, a lack of access to clean water and increasing energy demands. In each of the villages, we identified specific priorities and designed lo-calised programmes for long-term environmental recovery.

In Ruhiira, Uganda, and Koraro, Ethiopia, eroded land was repaired so that now it conserves moisture better, increasing crop yields and preventing precious water disappearing into far-off rivers. The Millennium Village at Koraro lies in steep and hilly terrain where decades of chopping down trees for firewood mean there has been little to stop ‘run-off’ – the swift movement of rare rainfall away down the slope, where it cannot be of use to villagers. In 2010, we focused our ef-forts on projects to better conserve that water. Ponds and small reservoirs were built to trap rainfall, channels were dug to divert run-off into fields, and irrigation wells were excavated by hand. Together, these schemes have recharged groundwater, raising the water table and allowing kitchen gardens to be planted. In one part of the village, a small stream which used to dry up when the rains stopped contin-ued to flow well into the dry season this year, reducing ten-sions between people competing for scarce water supplies.

ENviRONMENT

Protecting Nature, Earning Money: Entrenching care of the environment into daily life

In Ruhiira and Mwandama, Malawi, tree saplings have been planted to create wooded areas to rehabilitate marginal hillsides. In Mwandama, we encouraged pupils to plant and care for trees in their school grounds, along river banks and on bare hillsides. Of the 14 schools that took part, Katete Primary planted the most saplings and won six footballs and two football kits as a prize. In total during 2010, 600,000 tree saplings have been planted – and the target for 2011 is to plant a million more.

Two million saplings were planted in Ruhiira, and at the same time a less visible, but equally important environ-mental solution has been introduced, called Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM). Fields on steep slopes were terraced and raised banks built to trap water. Vegetables whose roots lock nitrogen into the soil were planted along-side staple crops. All of this has had a tremendous effect – during 2010, Ruhiira’s farmers reported yields of their maize harvest increased from 0.8 metric tonnes per hectare to 3.5 metric tonnes.

“In the past, my family and I were always hungry all year round, my land was bare with no trees, and my harvest was always poor,” said Anatoli Nuwabeine, 58, a farmer with eight children, living in Kahurwa, Ruhiira.

Farmers have been trained on the good use of fertilisers

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“Now I have learned how to use fertilisers, and how to slow soil erosion by planting

grasses and trees, and digging trenches to trap water. This has increased my harvest yields, and the crops and the soil are not washed away to the valleys by rainwater. My productivity has increased, my family’s livelihoods are better, we are no longer as

hungry. I feel happy.”

Anatoli Nuwabeine, a farmer from Ruhiira

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To teach the dangers of deforestation, tree nurseries were planted in nine primary schools in Mbola, Tanzania, and 20 School Environment Clubs have been set up. Schools plant-ed special fast-growing tree species to be used for firewood for the school meal programme, reducing the need to cut trees in the forest. We are working with the community to begin to explore how the international carbon credit market can benefit farmers. This is not straightforward – for now, the key problem accessing that growing market is the high cost associated with setting it up among subsistence farm-ers. There are hopes that this will be tackled with future technological advances in remote sensing and monitoring using global positioning systems and mobile telephony. This will reduce transaction costs and make it easier for people across the Millennium Villages to reap rewards from limit-ing deforestation. In the meantime in 2010, our emphasis in Mbola has been on handing out multipurpose tree seed-lings, and promoting environmentally sound lighting by sell-ing 96 solar lanterns to the community.

“I have not had to buy any kerosene to light my house, and I have not had to pay people to charge my mobile phone because I can do it through the lantern,” said Lucy Makoba, from Inonelwa in Mbola. Similarly in Sauri, Kenya, projects have focused on refor-estation and efforts to repair land that had eroded due to continuous cultivation and overgrazing. During 2010, 1.3 million tree and fruit tree seedlings were planted, which, as they grow, will help conserve a vital water catchment and improve the soil. Many of the 22 different species chosen can be used as medicines and nutritious food, or for shade and fencing. To help move away from a reliance on meat for protein – and the stress on the land from grazing – 60 fish ponds have been dug. This is a crucial area of our focus: environmental protec-tion which also carries the benefits of diversifying diets. In Mayange, Rwanda, farmers like Thaddeus Munyemana have been trained on how better to manage irrigation for their fields, and to grow a varied crop for personal

consumption and for sale at the local market. During 2010, Mr Munyemana established a fruit seedling nursery which he manages himself, supplying local markets and others across the country with varieties until now rarely seen in Rwanda.

In Dertu, Kenya, the harsh landscape means that even marginal environmental degradation, or an unpredicted lack of rainfall, can have a devastating effect on the livestock-dependent population. For everyone, drought is a constant fear, threatening limited water and a lack of food for ani-mals. During 2010, we built a shelter to store hay harvested after the rains, to give livestock a supply of fodder even during drought.

At the same time, the community in Dertu decided to charge people to bring their animals to drink there – roughly two cents for a goat, rising to 75 cents for a camel. These modest charges earn the fund, managed by the community, between $30,000 and $75,000 in a year. That windfall was used to maintain borehole pumps and to support a programme to give children from poorer families meals at school. “This is an important opportunity and a great lesson to learn in managing our resources,” said Halima Mohamed, the fund’s treasurer. The community-based management of their boreholes is in essence a classic example of the new thinking in environ-mental protection programmes - Payment for Ecosystem Services – and it has been cited as exemplary by Kenya’s Tana River Water Services Board. We are sure that it will be a good model for other villages to follow.

Fish ponds in Sauri help relieve the stress on land from grazing animals

Pupils at Inonelwa Primary School in Mbola performing tree nursery management

Gathering hay to store for times of drought

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Agriculture’s contribution to fighting poverty in Africa goes beyond people simply having enough nutritious food to eat or sell. The continent’s economies still rely heavily on earnings from agriculture, and it is still the main source of livelihood for hundreds of millions of farmers. The success or failure of the national harvest has direct impacts on the fiscal performance of most countries across the continent. Despite this, agriculture has historically received low attention. As a result, farming in Sub-Saharan Africa is characterised by a subsistence system of low inputs, low outputs and low investment. Agriculture in Africa is suffering from a structural problem – and it needs a structural transformation. Addressing this was a pioneer priority of the Millennium Vil-lages Project from its inception in 2005. Increasing the pro-duction of major staple crops with better agricultural inputs, and improved agronomic and soil fertility practices, was our entry point to kick-start the necessary transformation. We have seen great successes already, and now we aim to lever-age those advances to shift to other practices to turn sub-sistence farming into profit-making commercial businesses. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including focusing on commodities with a high market demand, improving the quality and standard of produce, taking measures to ensure it meets the necessary sanitary requirements, and overall improvements to crop productivity and livestock agriculture. A series of activities were strengthened in 2010 to main-tain the momentum of our successes in commercialising agricultural production. These included diversifying crop production, introducing modern irrigation techniques, and adding value to produce to increase its value at market. Now, traditional staple foods grow alongside new high-value, nutritional crops including groundnuts, soy beans, green leafy vegetables such as amaranth, cassava and pumpkin leaves, and fruit trees such as citrus, mango and papaya. In Mayange, Rwanda, cassava farmers whose entire plots had been wiped out by a virus were given disease-resistant cuttings, and today more than 1,000ha of land are cultivated with cassava. A new processing plant to mill raw produce

AGRiCULTURE

Growing success: innovative agriculture for better nutrition and increased incomes

into high-value flour has been built, with an initial invest-ment of $60,000 from the MVP, which now also employs seven permanent staff and up to 50 casual weekly workers. The farmers’ increased yields and their newly refined prod-uct have allowed them to expand their sales to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and to neighbouring Burundi. The cooperative now regularly attends nationwide trade shows, and it was given an award by the district in recognition of its promotion of cassava production. There is still room for improvement – as a young organisation, it needs help to boost its capacity to manage its newly-flourishing business in a more effective manner.

Fish farms have proven to be a highly beneficial, effective and low-cost intervention at the community level in Sauri, Kenya. There are already 60 ponds in the cluster, which cost $240 each to build and equip. MVP invested $4,800 in the project, and the farmers themselves contributed $2,400. We have also set up fingerling breeding units, and plan to train the community on best practice for how to raise these young fish. As these projects expand, an intensive approach will be adopted to bring together fingerling producers, feed produc-ers, fish farmers, and consumers. This will involve selecting committed entrepreneurs with business acumen from within the community to pursue a variety of fish farming options.

saURi’s neW fish faRMs: fUtURe Plans

• Expanding the existing fish production ponds to 1,550 fish ponds by 2015, producing 282 tons of tilapia and 441 tons of catfish

• Setting up commercial fingerling hatcheries at strategic sites, producing 240,000 tilapia fingerlings and 150,000 catfish fingerlings per hatchery per year by 2015

• Creating quality fish feed producers to supply local fish farmers

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In 2010, we have worked to advise people about soy bean’sbenefits, and encouraged it to be planted under integrated soil fertility management programmes, designed to boost productivity and diversify agriculture. At the same time, it has a higher market value than maize, meaning that farm-ers earn greater income selling their harvests. More than 8,000 of Ruhiira’s farmers have been trained on growing soy bean, and most have been provided with improved, disease-resistant seeds. Radio shows and cooking demonstrations were used to alert the community to the plant’s benefits, and a significant number of households now use part of their harvest in their own meals. These combined interventions are perhaps best seen in Mwandama, Malawi. With hybrid maize seeds, fertiliser and topdressing provided to the village’s farmers, Mwandama now boasts a record maize yield increase of up to 5.6 metric tonnes per hectare, compared to Malawi’s national average of 1.2 Mt/ha. Drip irrigation schemes have been introduced to increase agricultural productivity for business, and to ex-pand cultivation of high value crops, mostly vegetables and fruits. These allow farmers to earn enough profit at market to offset the extra irrigation cost. The initiative also teaches farmers how to produce the quality and quantity of these cash crops required year-round by nearby markets. Taken together, the efforts made in the MVP’s agriculture sector – improving harvests, diversifying diets and increas-ing business opportunities for farmers – have all contributed to the overall health of the villagers. The overriding vision of the nutrition sector at The MDG Centre is to allow poor communities a high level of nutritional wellbeing, free fromhunger and malnutrition. It is now becoming increasingly clear that after three years of exposure into nutrition- relevant actions, there are striking improvements in peo-ple’s nutritional status in all sites in Sub-Saharan Africa. The MVP nutrition sector is making tremendous achievements using high impact interventions in all the key pillars of the nutrition (clinical, school-based, food based and community based approaches) at the local, national and regional levels.

Margaret Ochieng, a fish farmer in Sauri, throws fish feed into her Tilapia pond

Farmers have tripled their yields by using fertilisers and improved seeds

Booming cassava production in Mayange has allowed the project to invest in a flour plant

Also in Sauri, 41 drip irrigation systems are now in operation, some of which have been paid for by private sector investors offering credit to farmers. The systems are expensive, how-ever, and most farmers have instead opted to use peddle pumps, which are cheap but effective enough to irrigate up to one hectare. We now plan to spend $92,000 to introduce these pumps to benefit 990 farmers, who will be encour-aged to grow mainly horticultural crops including tomatoes, onions, kales, cabbages and tissue culture bananas, to be marketed through their cooperatives. The MVP team will make sure that women are given an equal chance to benefit, that all farmers are aware of the best water management techniques, and that help is given to sell their produce in new markets.

Planting soy beans in Ruhiira, Uganda, has had a double benefit – the plant locks nitrogen into the soil, in an area where nutrients had been depleted, and it provides healthy food for people who have been affected by malnutrition.

“Our flour is better quality than any other flour sold in Rwanda.”

Jean Damascene Hategekimana, Mayange’s cassava processing plant manager

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The MDG Centre’s aim to accelerate progress towards achieving all eight MDGs was given a significant boost during the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit, in New York in September. Its objectives were to review prog-ress, identify constraints and gaps, and also commit to further actions to help achieve the Goals by 2015. Heads of state and governments, civil societies, private sector represen-tatives and advocacy groups attended the summit. This created unprecedented levels of convergence on the need to overcome present poverty levels to maintain a peaceful, prosperous and environmentally sound world. World lead-ers – especially from wealthier countries – made serious comments on issues including fighting malaria, child mal-nutrition, maternal health and smallholder agriculture. We have no doubt that this global focus and awareness would not have happened without all the hard work in the decade since the launch of the MDGs. In his remarks, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon drew on his visit to one of the Millennium Villages in Malawi this year to encourage continued international attention on the Goals. “This year I visited nearly a dozen countries in Africa and saw for myself what is possible,” Mr Ban said. “At the Millennium Village of Mwandama in Malawi, at the Songhai community in Benin, I saw innovation, integrated projects and persever-ance. We must reward such faith with resolve of our own. By using the tools we have. By delivering the resources we need. And, above all, by exercising political leadership.” World leaders, he said, knew “the gaps and the gains, what works and what doesn’t work”, and they must focus on “smart investments in infrastructure, small farmers, social services, and above all in women and girls”. The Summit’s final declaration committed the world to fresh impetus towards achieving the Goals, and gave a renewed focus on health and gender equality in the next five years, while affirming the importance of integrated development activities to meeting targets in all sectors. This reflects the

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boosting momentum to scale up our successes on the road to 2015

Centre’s strategic direction for scaling up our experiences and proven practices, from villages to districts to regions to nations. During the course of the three-day Summit, several side-events gave the Centre the opportunity to showcase our work, and in particular to show how integrated interven-tions across many development sectors together accelerate improvements. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ireland’s Foreign Minister Michael Martin held a meeting to boost focus on the “1,000 Days” initiative to improve child nutrition. This aims to tackle under-nutrition in infants in their first years, which can stunt their opportunity to grow to reach their full potential – something that we have been working on as an integral part of the approach of The MDG Centre’s health team in all the villages. There are now concrete objectives to be met, and the meeting made clear offers to developing countries to help them to implement crucial interventions in their respective development plans. A second side-summit gathered representatives of African countries endowed with mineral resources, and focused on how to make use of earnings from those resources for development growth. It is important to increase the trans-parency of deals struck between international mining firms and governments, and the 25 mineral-rich countries, busi-ness advocates and mining companies who attended agreed to meet once a year. Two of the key participants were Vale Mining Company, which is co-sponsoring a new Millennium Village in Zambia, and COMESA, a prime partner in The MDG Centre’s new Drylands Initiative. To promote that new programme, which will be discussed later in this Annual Report, Columbia University’s World Leaders’ Forum brought together government officials of drylands countries, and experts in arid land management, to talk with students and development workers about our innovative approaches to tackling these forgotten communities.

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Above all, the Summit gave The MDG Centre a chance to show how our integrated approach, bringing the efforts of many different development sectors together in a common purpose, is working. The UN Secretary-General, in his report for 2010, Keeping the Promise, recognised the need for coun-tries to be able to show evidence of ‘what works’, by looking at progress over time. This will show how there has been improvements in some areas and not in others, allowing us to revisit obstacles and, informed by past experience, design new approaches to scale up Millennium Village successes to regional and national levels. That needs several elements: strategic partnerships, more resources from donors and the private sector, innovations, and greater involvement of technical experts in the vari-ous sectors. Already, government policies in many coun-tries where The MDG Centre works are being adapted to take account of our approach, and we would look to con-tinue strengthening and adding value to those government-led frameworks. In 2010, we supported programmes in East Africa that profiled best practices and how they were implemented to benefit more of the region’s poorest people. These included Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Umurenge Pro-gramme, launched by the country’s government in 2007. With our help, and recognising successes in the Millennium Village at Mayange, it aims to accelerate poverty eradica-tion, economic growth and social protection, by scaling up Millennium Village-type interventions to 416 administrative sectors by 2012. This is part of Rwanda’s Economic Devel-opment and Poverty Reduction Strategy, which plans to lift the country’s poorest out of extreme poverty through public works projects, microfinance and microinsurance, and direct support. The MDG Centre has provided key lessons from our projects to the programme, in part to integrate its focus with achieving the MDGs. In Malawi, the Centre has been a critical player in scaling up food security interventions since 2007. We have played a central role in guiding the National Food Security Pro-gramme, and have provided lessons to guide smallholder

farmers’ access to farm inputs. In the coming months, the Centre will provide technical support for further nation-wide expansion, with UNDP and development planning and finance ministries. A donor and investors’ conference is scheduled to take place early in 2011, where the scaling-up strategies will be shared. Already, Malawi has made huge strides in agricultural production, widening the successes achieved in schemes like the Millennium Villages to the national level. Fertiliser subsi-dies and other government policies mean that a country that was historically dependent on food aid is now a net exporter of food to neighbouring countries, especially to Zimbabwe. The MDG Centre and the Millennium Villages Project also played a central role in the evolvement of Kenya’s new “Millennium Districts”. We helped craft a needs assess-ment and consultation process, drawing on the concept and lessons from the MVP and proven “quick win” approaches. In 2010, with Kenya’s planning and national development ministry, we helped formulate a new strategy for scaling-up ‘what works for the MDGs’ for the country. The Millennium Districts closely learn from and follow the Millennium Villages model, but with the added benefits of training administrators and government officials to help guide the growth of MDG-focused activities at district level. The emphasis is on developing infrastructure, enhancing referral services from village to district health facilities, de-veloping processing facilities to add value to farm produce, and boosting markets for finished goods. The Millennium Districts approach helps advance Kenya’s national Vision 2030 development policies. These examples show that The MDG Centre continues to assist governments design effective scaling-up programmes which highlight effective partnerships to integrate resources and expertise to accelerate progress on the MDGs. We have clearly demonstrated that success comes with providing the multi-sector set of interventions simultaneously, together as a package.

Shallow well in Koraro Ayoub Kim, a teacher in Mbola, has a full class-room thanks to the feeding programme

Cassava is transported by truck on a paved road in Mayange

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goal 1: eradiCate extreme poverty and Hunger $8 billion – New annual World Bank support to agriculture, up from $4.1 billion before 2008 $1 million – donation from Agrium to five Millennium Villages including 1,400 metric tons of urea fertiliser

goal 2: aCHieve universal primary eduCation $3.5 billion – New education spending in developing countries from Japan, over five years beginning 2011

goal 3: promote gender equality and empower women 100 – Connect To Learn secondary school scholarships to be distributed in 100 days in two Millennium Villages

goal 4: reduCe CHild mortality / goal 5: improve maternal HealtH $40 billion - Money committed to the new Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, which could save the lives of 16 million women and children, prevent 33 million unwanted pregnancies, protect 120 million children from pneumonia and 88 million children from stunting due to malnutrition

goal 6: Combat Hiv/aids, malaria and otHer diseases 20% - Increase in France’s funding to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria in 2011-2013 400,000 – Anti-malaria bed nets to be donated to Millennium Villages by Sumitomo Chemical

goal 7: ensure environmental sustainability 100 million – New clean-burning cook stoves to be provided, funded by the US and UN Foundation

goal 8: global partnersHip for development €1 billion – EU funding to help most needy countries progress towards MDGs they are furthest from achieving

the 2010 MDg sUMMit in nUMBeRs

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Imagine a climate where if the rains come at all, they are so meagre as to be functionally meaningless, or so power-ful that they sweep over the landscape leaving nothing but floods and erosion. Imagine an environment where the little readily available water is saline, brackish, or unhygienic, and where people must travel dozens of miles every day in search of pasture or food for their animals. Imagine walk-ing a day or more to reach the closest available health or veterinary services. All of these are challenges faced by the residents of East Africa’s dryland areas, previously neglected people who struggle to find the same opportunities afforded to others living in less arid locations. Overcoming that neglect is the main aim of a new venture launched in July 2010 by The MDG Centre, in partnership with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The Drylands Initiative will ensure that thousandsof pastoralists who have historically been neglected will benefit from projects on animal production, infrastructure, health, education, and business in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan. The MDG Centre is also in talks with Eritrea.

dRYLANds

what About Us? A fresh focus on East Africa’s forgotten drylands

“Poverty levels are extraordinarily high in the drylands of East Africa,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals.

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Swathes of East Africa do not receive any rain for months at a time

Kenya

North-Eastern Province

Nationally

Access to safe drinking water

4.6%

57.0%

Gross primary school enrolment rate

71.5%

116.9%

Children underweight

24.5%

16.1%

Literacy

24.8%

71.4%

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Moroto District

Nationally

Life expectancy

32.87

50.40

Gross primary school enrolment rate

44%

118%

Adult Literacy

13.1 %

69%

poverty indiCators in arid distriCts Compared to national averages

UN 2010 - Content

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and to demonstrate that real and significant levels of devel-opment are possible. The Initiative will overcome historical and current misconceptions about drylands, and as a result will bring hope to millions of people who have suffered neglect for many years. The Drylands Initiative will be the first step in bringing dispossessed communities into the mainstream of development, and turning their communities into flourishing contributors to their countries’ economies. The Initiative will achieve these aims through an integrated approach within each community, by which all of the Millen-nium Development Goals will be tackled simultaneously. The Initiative will also operate at a regional level, recognising that the drylands across East Africa form a single economic space and that challenges and opportunities do not stop at national boundaries.

“Clean water is needed for health, for agriculture and to keep livestock alive. We can move away from rain-fed agriculture, and indeed practice irrigation for more food, better health care, healthier livestock. We are seeing the way pastoralists continue to move with livestock and wealth – plans should be made to be sure that real development takes place. For what we hope to achieve we require strong political will and commitment to ensure that resources reach these regions – so we will no longer be talking of marginalised regions,” said Charity Ngilu, Kenya’s minister for water and irrigation.

Based on the model established by the Millennium Villages Project – community-led, long-term, holistic, integrated and market orientated – the Drylands Initiative looks to jump-start access and opportunities to ensure that this generation of drylands residents is the last to face the gaps in access and opportunity which limit their total potential. The Initiative will be implemented through a three tier programme where the first tier will focus on grassroots interventions, involving the creation of basic infrastructure and development operations with a special focus on water services. The second tier is through national level imple-mentation. Close working relations will be established with national governments to encourage them to include these

“The people who endure that poverty lack access to the most basic services: education, primary health care, safe sanitation, veterinary care for their livestock, and security from the ravages of drought and other environmental shocks. Climate change threatens to make the situation even more dire, unless active efforts are made to promote development and community resiliency. “Fortunately, the people of the drylands are hard-work-ing and are eager to invest in a sustainable future. With targeted efforts in critical areas — for example, livestock management and marketing, scaled up health care, new educational opportunities, and upgraded infrastructure, pastoralist communities can achieve a major gain in pro-ductivity and economic wellbeing. This is what the Drylands Initiative sets out to achieve,” added Prof Sachs at the launching event.

The lifestyles of these communities, whether pastoral or agro-pastoral, have evolved over centuries to take advantage of the resources available throughout the severe settings on which they subsist. They are often nomadic, ensuring that they can take advantage of resources when and where they are available. This ability to maximise resources in a harsh environment has ensured their survival through the most difficult of circumstances. Even so, survival is not enough. Drylands regions typically earn the lowest scores on indices of human development. They are forced to overcome the challenges of the envi-ronment, insecurity, and years of inadequate or misguided support. People living in drylands deserve the same access to water, healthcare, and education that those in other regions enjoy. Their right to access pasture and forage for their animals needs to be maintained. In short, they deserve the same opportunities already available to people across East Africa.

The main objective of the Initiative is to improve access to critical services and opportunities for drylands inhabitants,

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“Bringing economic improvement and climate resiliency will not only raise living standards but will also promote

peace. Recent history has amply demon-strated that many of the conflicts in

drylands result from water stress, hunger, and other vulnerabilities. Investing in

drylands development is therefore also investing in peace and security.”

Jeffrey Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute

Development indicators for drylands areas are among the most challenging in the world

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previously neglected areas in policy, national strategy documents, plans and budgets. The third tier is at the region-al level. These regions occupy homogenous ecosystems with shared problems, meaning that it is in the interests of each government to come together and create technical solutions which can easily be transferred across boundaries. At the outset, the Initiative’s priorities are to establish the funding, framework, and support to ensure the programme’s success. Already, we have held two high-level meetings with ministers, representatives, and officials in the United Nations, regional governments and non-governmental organisations. Our second high-level workshop in July gar-nered support and attendance from eight key ministers from the six participating countries. A panel at the World Leaders Forum at Columbia Univer-sity discussed the Drylands Initiative and Challenges of the Drylands in September 2010, ahead of the UN Millennium Development Goal Summit in New York. This allowed for a broad discussion of the Initiative, and gave the chance for contributions and conversations on its implementation and the historical issues which led to the challenges experienced in dryland areas today. “The objective of this programme is to bring the dispos-sessed into mainstream economic development so they can also make meaningful contributions to the GDP of their respective countries,” said Belay Begashaw, Director of The MDG Centre. Already, we have secured invitations from all six countries involved to start the preparatory work necessary to begin implementation in 2011. We have completed site visits in Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, to finalise options for the locations where we will focus efforts. The selection criteria were based on issues common to arid and semi-arid regions, which include high levels of income poverty, little access to healthcare or education, high vulnerability

to droughts and almost no access to markets. Preliminary site assessments have finished at those areas, and we have begun to develop the regional bodies needed to oversee the project’s implementation. COMESA has already pledged funding to ensure that the Initiative starts soon.

Looking forward to 2011, the Drylands Initiative will focus on several priorities. We will recruit core site staff to begin the baseline assessments needed to target project interventions. We will execute “quick-win” programmes to demonstrate initial successes, raise the project’s profile, and encourage community support. These will include livestock vaccination campaigns, anti-malaria bed-net distribution, school meals programmes, the introduction of mobile health, veterinary and education services, and interventions to improve water harvesting. In addition, hydrological assessments will be completed on a priority basis to begin meaningful work on water management and retention as soon as possible. These include check dams to reduce water flow and surface erosion and increase soil absorption, recharge springs to re-supply groundwater sources, sub-surface dams to allow seasonal rivers to retain water for longer periods of time, and surface dams for either irrigation or livestock use, as appropriate. The MDG Centre looks forward to expanding in size and scope to support this wonderful initiative and expects to have a year’s worth of success stories to report on this time next year.

Pastoralists walk their livestock long distances between water sources

The Drylands Initiative will use integrated interventions proven in the Millennium Villages

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The MDG Centre has made a series of ground-breaking new partnerships during 2010 that are designed to boost the implementation of the Goals as the 2015 deadline nears. Last year, the Millennium Villages Project also became a popular success story for the MDGs in Africa, attracting visitors to witness the tangible progress our work is making.

In January, The MDG Centre and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) signed a memoran-dum of understanding aimed at offering policy, technical and scientific support to regional governments to help attain the Goals. Within this was a special focus on food security, climate change and business development. “Our collaboration with The MDG Centre represents a unique opportunity to demonstrate that strategic partner-ships can make a change in the lives of marginalised peo-ple and contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” Sindiso Ngwenya, COMESA’s Secretary-General, said at the signing ceremony. The partnership’s flagship project is the Drylands Initiative, officially launched in July in Nairobi. Eight ministers from six regional countries attended, along with officials from African and international governments and the United Nations, experts, scientists, and civil society representatives.

PARTNERshiPs

spreading The Promise: New connections made in 2010

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The same month saw the signing of another partnership with the main continental body, the African Union, during its summit in Uganda. The five-year deal aims to help Sub-Saha-ran countries achieve the MDGs through improved national policies, and it grants The MDG Centre the status of Observer at the AU. The Centre will also assist the AU Commission in drawing up its assessment report on the MDGs in Africa, particularly where Millennium Villages are present. Maxwell Mkwezalamba, Commissioner for Economic Affairs, signed on behalf of COMESA, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, represented The MDG Centre.

Two other significant projects launched in 2009 began bearing fruit in the villages last year. The first, in partner-ship with UNAIDS, aims to eliminate mother-to-child HIV transmission in all villages. Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS, visited Sauri, Kenya, in January with Professor Sachs to witness first-hand the efforts made towards reaching this goal. The second collaboration, with the World Food Programme (WFP), sees villagers selling their crops to WFP’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative. During a visit to Ruhiira in July, Josette Sheeran, WFP’s Executive Director, promised to double the amount of food bought from local women famers, which already amounted to 250 metric tonnes of beans and maize in 2010. “I came here first, because I heard about the transformation and revolution of hope in this community with your partner-ship with the Millennium Villages and Ruhiira,” Ms Sheeran said during a talk to the village’s Women’s Association.

Josette Sheeran, World Food Programme Executive Director, and Prof Jeffrey Sachs in Ruhiira

“I want to take your success story to the world. When I see what you are doing here, I know we can succeed with all our Millennium Development Goals.”

Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

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As the MVP strengthens its links with the UN, the most significant event was the first visit by a sitting Secretary- General to a Millennium Village. Ban Ki-moon and his wife toured Mwandama, Malawi, in May, with a delegation including Professor Sachs and Dr Belay Begashaw. Mr Ban told Mwandama’s villagers that he was “very impressed” with what he saw. A new education partnership called Connect To Learn, aimed at improving secondary education for children and with a focus on girls, was announced in April in Malawi. Connect To Learn provides three-year scholarships to attend secondary school and covers tuition, books, uniforms, and broadband technology. The announcement coincided with a visit to Gumulira Millennium Village by Madonna, the American pop star, Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, and Professor Sachs, who all spoke of working together to make this initiative a success. The first 100 scholarships were to be distributed in the Millennium Villages in Ghana and Tanzania. For the first time, the team at the Mbola Millennium Village – where they have been working on innovative interventions since 2006 – welcomed both Tanzania’s President and Prime Minister during separate visits. Impressed by the new schools and health clinics he saw in the village in March, President Jakaya Kikwete said: “This is what we want to see, improved people’s standards of living.”

The previous month, his Prime Minister, Mizengo Pinda, visited the village and inaugurated a new dispensary. A woman had just given birth to a healthy baby boy and the family decided to name him Peter Pinda Sarawa, in the Prime Minister’s honour. “Doctors and nurses attend to us well. We are grateful to the Millennium Villages for their services,” said Sarawa Lubeja, Peter’s proud new father. As the Millennium Villages’ multi-sector approach shows increasing positive results, the project has attracted new and renewed support from international figures, including Tommy Hilfiger, the American fashion designer, and John Legend, the multi-award winning American musician. Following his visit to Ruhiira, Mr Hilfiger announced in June that his corporate foundation would support the village under the $2 million grant given to Millennium Promise.

John Legend, a supporter of the Millennium Villages through his Show Me Campaign, visited Mbola for the third time in June. He came to witness the cluster’s progress and to talk to farmers who are diversifying their crops and seeing dramatic increases in their yields. During the trip, villages dedicated a new water tank for improved water distribution to the singer in recognition of his continued support.

Ban Ki-moon speaks with pupils of Dindi School, Mwandama

Show Me – John Legend visits Mbola to review progress

“No-one could fail to be deeply moved at the many serious challenges that

villagers face every day in Ruhiira, but at the same time I have been incredibly inspired by the community spirit and the desire to make long term changes that will provide for generations to come.”

Tommy Hilfiger, US designer

36

PREss REPORTsTo read the listed articles, please go to our website: www.mdgcentre.org

PREs

s A

Nd

sTA

ff

Uganda urged to develop mobile networkThe New Vision (Uganda), November 2010

Reducing death in childbirthABC Radio National (Australia), November 2010

Sauri village chases millennium goalThe Standard (Kenya), October 2010

Life after birth: making motherhood safer in KenyaReuters AlertNet, October 2010

In Kenya, proof that the Millennium goals can workThe Independent (UK), September 2010

Village becomes lab for curing Africa’s problemsAssociated Press, September 2010

Women hold key to MDGs but...Irin News, September 2010

Drylands pose challenge to achieving MDGsCapital News (Kenya), September 2010

Millennium Development Village: A case studyThe East African, August-September 2010

Nutrition initiative at the Millennium VillagesKenya Nutrition Bulletin, July-September 2010

Poverty plights environment in MalawiStreet News Service (UK), August 2010

Government to help Karamajong pastoralists settle downThe New Vision (Uganda), August 2010

WFP doubles food bought in Uganda Millennium VillageWFP, July 2010

East Africa in drive to develop neglected drylandsAgence France-Presse, July 2010

Tabora village to access waterThe Citizen (Tanzania), June 2010

First Lady hails initiative for KaramojaThe New Vision (Uganda), June 2010

Low-cost thrills in Millennium Village dataThe Huffington Post (USA), May 2010

Millennium Villages Project ICT Director in Time 100 listTime Magazine (USA), April 2010

Madonna’s Malawi missionAssociated Press, April 2010

Madonna visits Malawi projectBBC News (UK), April 2010

UN chief points the way forward to meet anti-poverty goalsUnited Nations Radio, March 2010

Tanzania’s president visits Millennium VillageDaily News (Tanzania), March 2010

Shower of aid brings flood of progressThe New York Times (USA), March 2010

Pinda lauds scientific agricultureThe Citizen (Tanzania), February 2010

Africa’s good newsThe Jerusalem Post (Israel), February 2010

Why Mwandama now laughs at hungerAfrica News (The Netherlands), February 2010

UN village project provides model for ending povertyThe National (UAE), February 2010

Partnership may breathe new life into drylandsThe Standard (Kenya), January 2010

Mayange’s anti-hunger campaign commendedThe New Times (Rwanda), January 2010

Sack helped me think business, says farmerThe Standard (Kenya), January 2010

ThE Mdg CENTRE STAFF

Director

Dr Belay Ejigu Begashaw

Programme advisors

Richard Ayah, Regional Health Systems Advisor

Maurice Barasa, Regional eHealth Specialist

Hisham Fouad, Regional Infrastructure Coordinator

Sharon Gordon, Environmental Specialist

Dennis Haraszko, Regional Coordinator of the Millennium Cities Initiative

Susan Lyria Karuti, Regional Advisor Gender and Education

Joelle Bassoul Mojon, Communications Specialist

Joy Morabu, Finance and Operations Manager for Millennium Promise in Kenya

Julie Murugi , Regional Maternal and Child Health Advisor

Patrick Mutuo, Regional Agriculture Specialist

Mwende Mwendwa, Associate Economist

Stephen Ngigi, Regional Water Coordinator

John Okorio, Regional Operations Manager

Jackline Oluoch, Regional Community Health Worker (CHW) Programme Coordinator

Roselyne Omondi, Regional Business Advisor

Margaret Wagah, Regional Nutrition Advisor

Philip Wambua, Regional HIV/Aids Advisor

Margaret Wanjiku, Regional Public Sector Management Specialist (on secondment by SNV)

Planning and operations

Jane Wambugu, Manager, Finance and Administration

Elizabeth Mbugua, Accountant

Shem Kanyatti Mwangi, Senior Driver

Lina Wanga, Senior Administrative Assistant

Millennium Villages Project – Kenya

Dabar Abdi Maalim, Science Coordinator and Team Leader of Dertu MVP

Jessica Masira, Cluster Manager and Team Leader of Sauri MVP

Global leadership teamJeffrey Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia UniversityPedro Sanchez, Director, Tropical Agriculture and Environment Programme, The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Copyright © The MDG Centre East & Southern Africa. First printed 2010ISSN 2077-5091All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from The MDG Centre.Compiled and produced by The MDG CentrePhotographs by The MDG Centre and MVP staff, except: cover by Millennium Promise; page 16 and 36 by WFP/Frederic CourbetPrinting: UNON, Publishing Services Section, Nairobi, ISO 14001:2004-certifiedEditing: Mike PflanzGraphic Design: Stefanie Freccia, sf@emigrantmedia.com

(31 December 2010)

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