ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN AFRICA: A HAND UP NOT A HAND OUT The Millennium Village Project

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ESCAPING THE POVERTY TRAP IN AFRICA A HAND UP
NOT A HAND OUTThe Millennium Village Project
Oliver F. Williams
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Outline

• Poverty in the World
• Millennium Development Goals
• Millennium Villages
• The Role of Business
• The Role of Universities and Colleges
• Some Final Thoughts

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• Poverty in the World
• Africa is the poorest continent in the world
• UN Human Development Index of 2006 lists 35
  African Countries in the bottom 38 ranked nations
• 1980 10 of the poor people lived in
  Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2000, 33 of the poor are
  there
• From 1980 to 2001 the number of people living on
  less than 1 per day rose from 164 million to 314
  million in Sub-Saharan Africa
• China had 400 million people lifted out of
  poverty from 1980 to 2001

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• Why is Africa in a Poverty Trap?
• Jeffrey Sachs lists some key factors
• Very high transportations costs and small market
  size
• Low-productivity agriculture
• A very high disease burden
• Adverse geopolitics
• Very slow diffusion of technology from abroad

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• Millennium Development Goals
• In September 2000, world leaders convened the
  United Nations Millennium Summit and formulated a
  set of time-bound, measurable goals for combating
  extreme poverty. These 8 goals, called the
  Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), are the
  targets for the UN and are hoped to be achieved
  by 2015.
• Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and
  hunger. The first target is to halve,
• between 1990 and 2015, the
  proportion of
• people living on less than 1 per
  day. The
• second target is to similarly halve,
  in the same
• time period, the proportion of
  people who
• suffer from hunger.

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Goal 2 Achieve Universal Primary Education.
Ensure that all children, regardless of sex, will
be able to complete a full course of primary
schooling.
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Goal 3 Promote Gender Equality and Empower
Women. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and
secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in
all levels of education no later than 2015.
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Goal 4 Reduce Child Mortality. Reduce by
two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five
mortality rate.
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Goal 5 Improve Maternal Health. Reduce by
three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the
maternal mortality ratio.
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Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other
Diseases. Halt and begin to reverse the spread
of HIV/AIDS by 2015. Halt and reverse the
incidence of malaria and other major diseases by
2015.
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Goal 7 Ensure Environmental Sustainability.
Integrate the principles of sustainable
development into country policies and programs
and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without
sustainable access to safe drinking water and
basic sanitation. Achieve by 2020 a significant
improvement in the lives of at least 100 million
slum dwellers as measured by the proportion of
households with access to secure tenure
(UN-HABITAT).
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Goal 8 Global Partnership for development.
Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable,
nondiscriminatory trading and financial system.
Address the special needs of the Least Developed
Countries (including debt-relief and more
generous development assistance for countries
committed to poverty reduction). Address the
special needs of landlocked developing countries
and small island states. Deal comprehensively
with the debt problems of developing countries
through national and international measures in
order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
Develop and implement, in cooperation with
developing countries, strategies for decent and
productive work for youth. In cooperation with
pharmaceutical companies, provide access to
affordable essential drugs in developing
countries. In cooperation with the private
sector, make available the benefits of new
technologies, especially information and
communications technology.

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• Millennium Villages
• The Millennium Villages project is designed to
  provide a model for helping rural Africa
  communities lift themselves out of extreme
  poverty.

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• Millennium Villages Project (Cont)
• Seven simple reforms can substantially improve
  lives
• Fertilizer and seed to improve food yield
• Anti-malarial bed nets
• Improved water sources
• Diversification from staple into cash crops
• A school feeding program
• Deworming
• Introduction of new technologies such as energy
  saving stoves and mobile phones
• The 12 original research villages can be
  replicated by other villages. The goal is to
  have 1,000 villages by 2009. Cost is about 250
  per person over five years.
• Clustered in 12 groups across ten African
  countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali,
  Nigeria, Ruwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda)
  and has already reached nearly 400,000 people.

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• The Role of Business
• The General Electric (GE) Example. The
  Millennium Village Project designed its medical
  system using a hub and spoke model. Each
  research village would have a village cluster
  clinic. A sub-district hospital would service a
  number of clusters and a referral hospital would
  take on complex procedures and surgeries. GE
  provides effective x-ray, anesthesia, baby warmer
  and incubation equipment as well as power
  generation, water filtration systems and
  appliances.

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• Management skills are a key contribution by GE.

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• The Changing Role of Business in Society The
  Conceptual foundations
• Corporate citizenship and changing consumer
  expectations (Environics Institute Study)
• Worker Expectations
• The reason people come to work for GE is that
  they want to be about something that is bigger
  than themselves. People want to work hard, they
  want to get promoted, they want stock options,
  but they also want to work for a company that
  makes a difference. A company that is doing
  great things in the world. (Jeffrey Immelt, CEO
  of GE, Fortune, 1 Nov. 2004).
• The Purpose of the Corporation A Moving Target
• Economic and social results (CA, p. 35)
• Large aggregates of money and power
• Home of essential management skills

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• The Role of Universities and Colleges
• Columbia University, The Earth Institute and
  Jeffrey Sachs.
• The University of Notre Dame Example
• A partnership with Uganda Martyrs University and
  UND to focus on Nindye, a village in the Ugandan
  lowlands. (Nin-DEE-ay). The Notre Dame
  Millennium Development Initiative (NDMDI)
• Needs assessments bottom up methods
• Exchanging information with MVP

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Millennium Development Initiative
The University of Notre Dame Example
Ruhiira, Uganda (Millennium Villages Project)
Nindye, Uganda (Uganda Martyrs University)
University of Notre Dame
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The University of Notre Dame ExampleMillennium
Development Initiative

• Objective Contribute to the study and practice
  of human development through research and
  participation in poverty alleviation projects, in
  partnership with local institutions, beginning in
  Uganda
• Goals
• Build relationships with partners in Uganda
• Foster a spirit of solidarity at Notre Dame
• Raise awareness concerning challenges faced by
  those living in developing world
• Provide students with opportunities to conduct
  research that contributes to the goals of the
  localized projects
• Contribute to human development through direct
  investments in key socio-economic sectors in
  rural Uganda

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• Strategy for direct investment
• Build relationships with stakeholders at the
  local level (Ruhiira/MVP and Nindye/UMU)
• Conduct baseline assessment GIS mapping
  demographic, socio-economic and health surveying
• Ugandan project leaders share assessment results
  with community and facilitate prioritization of
  needs and formation of action plan
• Consult with MVP leadership regarding lessons
  learned and best practices (ongoing)
• Commence targeted investments in health,
  education, enterprise development and
  infrastructure improvement

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• Some Final Thoughts
• Where do you draw the line on what constitutes
  responsible corporate citizenship for business?
  Analogy between and individual and a firm
• The quasi-public institutional role, firm as a
  political actor, poses new challenges for more
  democratic processes and internal structures.
• It is possible to do well while doing good.