Sachs Student Lecture: Progress and Challenges in the Millennium Villages

Earlier today in Miller Theatre, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the UN Millennium Villages project, gave Columbia students a broad look at the project's beginnings, achievements, and future plans. Piecing together the many-faced portrait of poverty in Africa, Sachs walked the audience through the Millennium plan and approach. Sachs stresed that Millenium Villages are a demonstration and a learning project, "to document a way out of the poverty trap, that then, can be scaled up" from the local to macro level.

Highlights from the event:

• Trapped: Even if the solutions are there, even if people in Africa know what they need, they cannot afford them. When Sachs met the locals in Sauri, Kenya in mid-2004, there was such clarity among the villagers about their current situation and needs. Sachs and others asked, Do you need bed nets? They replied Yes! Do you need clinics? Yes! When asked, Then why don't you have them? They replied, We can't afford them.
• Connectivity: Cellphones are working wonders in Africa. Thanks to upgrades in phone coverage, people in Africa can start small businesses and camel herders can research where they'll get the best price before they make the trip. This also means wireless access for computers--a big help for setting up the school computer labs that the project envisions. Sachs also mentioned the possibility of an online network connecting clinics in the region.
• Four sectors: The Millennium project focuses on an "integrated set of investments in four areas"--Agriculture, Health, Education, and Infrastructure. The idea is that improvements in these sectors will lead to rise in income and contribute to sustained economic development.
• Stunning results: The UN review said of the project's progress, Impossible! No project can move this fast! says Sachs. One objective of the project's first phase is to grow more food using soil nutrients and improved seeds. With this approach, Malawi has seen its food production double within a year. Malawi is not alone--the method is low cost but reaps tremendous results.
• 2015: There are seven years left of the Millennium project, and it must tackle difficult tasks like agricultural diversification, irrigation, moving from primary to more elaborate health systems and educational facilities, electricity... The project aims to make host countries self-sustainable and gradually shift funding through grants to funding from increased cash flow from agricultural commodity exports. The challenge is to make businesses last. Fortunately, foreign investment from China and Middle East show real potential.
• Scale up: Host countries are enthusiastic. The results are tangible and real, and they happen dramatically over two years. Mali actually set foward a plan for scaling up in "communes" all over Mali. Mali will be the first to have a national-scale Millenium project; Rwanda follows closely behind.

Sachs cannot wait for a White House change. Here's the Q&A: Sachs took two questions. When Sachs listed the donor countries (Japan, Korea, Norway, etc), U.S. was conspicuously absent. Sachs remarked, "I hope U.S. will join under another administration." In his response to spillover concerns, Sachs realized he forgot to bring up a crucial point: voluntary fertility control. If the current growth rate continues, the population will double in 25 years and growth in the four sectors won't be able to keep up. Sachs apologized for being "nasty" in this following Bush remark, but Bush cut the funding to Maria Stopes International, one of the best family planning organizations.