Stephanie Nieuwoudt

NAIROBI, Jan 22 2007 (IPS) – World renowned economist and director of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Project, Jeffrey Sachs, is a harbinger of good news. During his visit to Nairobi, capital of Kenya, in mid-January he emphasised that it was still possible to meet the MDGs before 2015.
We can still achieve the Millennium Development Goals if proper use is made of the powerful tools at our disposal. But two things are necessary: sustained partnerships between governments and civil society and sustained donor resource input .

UN secretary general Kofi Annan commissioned the Millennium Project to develop an action plan against poverty under Sachs leadership.

There has been a scaling up of donor investment in the key areas of agriculture, education, the fight against HIV/AIDS and the provision of health services as part of the international effort to meet the UN s MDGs, said Sachs.

But donor money is still slow in reaching poor countries, regardless of the decades-old promise by developed nations to spend 0.7 percent of their gross national income (GNI) on overseas aid. Sachs said that of the recently promised 240 billion US dollars, only 140 billion dollars has reached poor countries.

On New York s Wall Street Christmas bonuses of 24 billion dollars were paid out in December 2006. Just think how far only a small part of this amount could have gone in projects to keep people alive in poor countries, Sachs pointed out. He supports debt cancellation to free up African governments resources for development.
The distribution of free bed nets in the fight against malaria is one example where targeted investment has made a difference. The international donor community had to be brought around to accept that it was possible to supply and distribute such products free of charge.

One of the results has been that malaria is being brought under control in Tanzania, among other African countries. We have seen the near elimination of malaria on the Tanzanian islands Unguja and Pemba which form part of Zanzibar.

Where there were previously hundreds of malaria cases every month, it is now down to almost zero in only one year, Sachs said.

The buy-in of donors has been crucial in achieving this result. International donor funds go to insecticide-treated bed nets which are then distributed through government programmes. The nets are supplied free of charge, as are the drugs to fight the disease. In Zanzibar, malaria awareness programmes have been stepped up.

According to recent reports by the United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF), the number of children under five who die from malaria could be reduced by 20 percent if bed nets were to be used. The drop in deaths in Tanzania seems to underscore this conclusion.

The good news about malaria in Tanzania is unfortunately not being replicated for the other MDGs. Tanzania has been identified as one of the Southern African countries least likely to achieve the MDGs.

As part of the effort to spur development, Tanzania and nine other African countries have been included in the Millennium Villages Project, a joint initiative between United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Sachs Earth Institute, based at Colombia University in the United States.

During his trip, Sachs visited the Millennium Villages in Tanzania and Uganda and met with UNEP s executive director Achim Steiner in Nairobi.

The core concept of the Millennium Villages Project is that it is possible to meet the MDGs before 2015. There are 12 Millennium Villages in Africa, situated in 10 African countries picked on the basis of their commitment to fighting corruption. Malawi is another participating Southern African country.

The project is concentrating on hunger hotspots. Donor money is enabling experts from the Earth Institute to develop complete sets of interventions in agriculture, economics, health and nutrition, energy, water and information technology.

The villages are run in collaboration with local communities. The aim is to lift entire communities out of poverty. From these core focus points, other projects will be developed to empower people.

In Tanzania, the Mbola Millennium Research Village has been started near Tabora in the mid-western part of the country. With 5,200 people dependent on subsistence farming, it is one of the poorest areas in Tanzania.

According to the Earth Institute, the relentless drought over the past few years has caused crop failure and is threatening people s health. Women and children spend the greater part of the day and even the night to fetch water from remote sources.

It has come to such a point that water drinking happens in turns: children in the morning, men in the afternoon and women at night. The people suffer from water-borne diseases like malaria and dysentery due to a lack of clean water and sanitation.

Other problems include deforestation, due to wood collection for fuel, and low crop yields.

Sachs emphasised the general need for improved investment in the agricultural sector. Donors have always responded with food aid after a famine disaster, which does not make sense, he argued. It is much cheaper to prevent famine by supplying fertiliser and improved seeds to communities.

Through such interventions it is possible to double and even treble crop yields after only one season, according to Sachs. As an example, he cites the Sauri Millennium Village in northeast Kenya. Strategic interventions have helped Sauri to achieve a 247 percent increase in maize crop yields by smallholder farmers after only one season.

Farmers in Sauri village committed themselves to donating 10 percent of their yields to a free school lunch programme. This produced another positive outcome as school attendance in Sauri shot up dramatically.

Responding to a question as to whether there is a global market for crops from Africa, Sachs said that the international markets are big enough to be able to accept any products from Africa.