Kenyan Millennium Village tests poverty-reduction goals

Gaudencia, a Kenyan woman in her fifties, works barefoot preparing her fallow field for sowing corn. Until two years ago, she had no idea leaving the land untilled some seasons could reap a better harvest. "It was not enough to feed the whole family before. But now it is," she says, wiping beads of sweat off her forehead.

Gaudencia's village of Sauri, near Lake Victoria in the rolling hills of south-west Kenya, gives no hint of its international role in fighting extreme poverty, but it is the world's first Millennium Village. As such, it benefits from advice and funding as part of a project begun in mid-2004 to test the Millennium Development Goals, targets for reducing poverty by 2015, agreed on by all the countries of the world in 2000. About 400 000 people in 80 villages in 10 African countries are now involved in the bid to show whether the much-hyped millennium targets are indeed achievable with human resources and investment.

Two years ago, Gaudencia started taking free farming lessons. She learned how to sow seeds in lines instead of scattering them randomly, why to leave fields fallow and how to use fertilizer. After her last harvest, she had enough to sell a sack of corn for the first time in her life and made 1,200 shillings (about $17). It was a breakthrough, but still not enough to pay for schooling for two of her three children.

Her neighbour Edward Oyier, in his sixties, is a step ahead. He can now send the five orphans he looks after to school after earning 10,000 shillings (about $140) in 2006 for selling part of his harvest. It was a good sale for a resident of Sauri, where three-quarters of the population live on less than $1 per day. "I have surplus of food. Before, it [the harvest] was from hand to mouth. Now it is also going from hand to bank," Oyier says.

As part of the millennium project, Oyier has to give part of his harvest to village schools, where results and attendance have improved since the creation of a free canteen. "From 2005 to 2007, the number of pupils increased from 500 to 750. It is due to the feeding programme and the good performances of the school," says Joseph Lanyo, headmaster of the Bar Sauri Primary School. "Before, children were sleepy because of empty stomachs." The school has risen in a district ranking from 198th place out of 390 in 1999 to ninth place in 2006.

Food production has tripled in three years and malaria has dropped by 75% in the past year, says Glenn Denning, director of the Millennium Development Goals centre for East and Southern Africa. "Everybody is able to produce and to eat. Vandalism cases have reduced drastically." Now it is up to the Kenyan government to maintain the improvements that have been achieved, he said. "The government has to make its own contribution. It is a big myth to say that the private sector will do the job. A private sector cannot flourish without good infrastructures and good schools," Denning says.

About 1 300 people have moved to Sauri in the past two years to join those already benefiting from the village's success, according to Patrick Mutuo, the project's coordinator. There are now plans to join with neighbouring villages to create a Millennium District, if they can gather extra funding, he says.

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