Martha dusts a small table with flour then starts kneading the dough, before dividing it into tennis-sized balls. Next to her, Jennifer places the balls on a tray and straight into the oven's open mouth. The sweet smell of baked bread suddenly fills the air. A few minutes later, the golden, warm rolls are taken out and brushed with margarine, turning into deliciously shiny pearls. The group . . . [more]
Lunch time in Ruhiira? Look no further. 'Fang Fang' is the place to go for yummy matooke (bananas) and beans. The woman behind this thriving micro-business is Tumushabe Boneconcila, whose entrepreneurial spirit is doing much to both improve the quality of her own life and radically shake up ideas of traditional gender roles in the community. Before the arrival of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in 2006, Boneconcila had begun building what would become Fang Fang and . . . [more]
This year, Sauri Millennium Village, Western Kenya, marked the half-way point in the project. With five years of successful innovations and interesting challenges behind it, and five to go to the Millennium Development Goals deadline, our aim now is to strengthen our links with the local authorities and ensure that they will take our interventions on board, and pursue them beyond 2015.
With this in mind, . . . [more]
The past year has been very rich for the Mwandama health team, which worked toward increasing access to health services and implementing innovative interventions. We are very proud of one major achievement: the completion of the Maera and Mwandama clinics as well as the Katete health post, and we look forward to inaugurating them once running water, solar power and staff . . . [more]
Kabagambe Fudier, head of ICT programs at Omwicwamba Primary School in Ruhiira, is truly an embodiment of what the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) is all about: by utilising the tools and skills provided by the project, he has created change both in his personal and professional life. A powerhouse of energy and enthusiasm, his finger crushing handshake is an indicator of the strength which he deployed in order to transform learning . . . [more]
What an amazing week this has been! I’m leaving Iowa today with an enhanced perspective on the role of agriculture in not only feeding families, but as an economic activity. For my friends and family still in Uganda, agriculture is more than a way of life; indeed, agriculture’s obvious role is to provide necessary nutrition. Crucially, we need to begin reorienting our thinking about agriculture, particularly in places like Africa, where agriculture is an opportunity to prosper if we are open-minded about scientific farming practices and embracing new technologies. Most importantly, I’m leaving today with a profound sense of pride . . . [more]
At the World Food Prize symposium in Iowa today, I’ve been listening to renowned experts, practitioners, and innovators from around the world discuss critical issues of food and hunger and how each intersects with the global development agenda. In a session called “Take it to the Farmer: Reaching the World’s Smallholders,” speakers shared strategies of boosting household food production, including the imperative to improve and expand Africa’s infrastructure in order to enable Africa’s farmers with the marketplace.
In both the formal presentations and in the hallways between sessions, I have been very much struck by the fact that there is widespread . . . [more]
I'm writing today from Des Moines, Iowa, where I have just arrived for the annual World Food Prize. As the Outreach Coordinator for Millennium Promise, I'm here to share our stories of impact and to be inspired by the great work of so many dedicated individuals and organizations around the world. On a more personal note, I'm also here to support and congratulate my good friend Jo Luck, the president of Heifer International and the co-recipient of this year's World Food Prize.
The World Food Prize is a very big deal, and for many, it's the equivalent of . . . [more]
To download this article as a PDF, please click HERE.
The discussion around evaluating large-scale development projects is an important one. Michael Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes offer a critique of the Millennium Village Project (MVP) and its research methods. Their paper misunderstands the MVP's aims and evaluation methods. We respond briefly here, to clarify some of those basic misunderstandings about the project's goals and approaches to evaluation.
1. Goals of the Millennium Villages Project
The MVP is a ten-year project running through 2015, the deadline year for the Millennium Development . . . [more]
Not long ago, next to the Ruhiira Health Centre was a relatively unassuming looking building surrounded by scattered building blocks and cast in the shadow of a towering radio mast which usually had the ICT facilitator Elly Nankunda tinkering at the top of it.
Come July 2010, however, and the place was unrecognisable, transformed into a Community Resource Centre (CRC) which Jeffrey Sachs deemed to be 'the first of its kind in . . . [more]
Business Development • Mwandama, Malawi
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