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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]
An entrepreneurial group of Mayange residents are building a new business by taking an old idea—beekeeping—and updating it with the help of training from the Millennium Villages Project and financial support from the Mayange Community Development Fund.
A total of 33 men and women who previously kept from one to ten traditional beehives to produce medicinal honey have formed a beekeeping cooperative to build modern hives to supply honey for the local . . . [more]
All were anxiously expecting it: the farmers in order to sell off their harvest, the community to buy good quality products, and the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) team to kick-start this income generating venture. On November 10, the cassava flour processing plant started production in Mayange, Rwanda. Less than two months later, it's already a success.
Until then, farmers in the region were selling their cassava fresh to traders and buying the flour they use as staple food from the market at a hiked price. The establishment of the plant means that they will increase their income by trading a . . . [more]
Fifteen years ago, Rwanda was devastated by one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Close to a million people were massacred in 100 days. As the country continues its difficult but remarkable recovery from the genocide, the Millennium Village of Mayange is living proof that economic development can play a significant role in the reconciliation process.
Mayange, located south of the capital Kigali, saw . . . [more]
Patrice Nsihimymihigo's small courtyard is covered with cassava. Sitting around it, women peel the brown roots and throw them back milky white onto the pile. Soon, his buyers, Rwandan middlemen, will whisk away his harvest to sell it at the border with Burundi.
Patrice is one of many smallholders in the Mayange Millennium Village, 40 km South of Kigali, who have been . . . [more]
Here in Rwanda, Magatte Wade's strange recent Huffington Post blog was received with quite a bit of surprise.
Wade's assertions over what she calls "ignorant" and "arrogant" rules for village tourism is wholly off-base. For starters, the community itself began the official tour program--in partnership with a private sector partner--nearly two years ago as a way to manage the significant number of requests to visit the village. As word of . . . [more]
Critics of sustainable development projects initiated by Westerners in Africa often raise a question: what happens when those Westerners pull out? The answer lies in an important concept: community ownership.
When someone is lifted out of the poverty trap, given the opportunity . . . [more]
Agriculture • Business Development • Education • Health • Infrastructure • Millennium Development Goals • Millennium Villages Project
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