allAfrica.com: Mozambique: Japanese Aid for Millennium Villages (Page 1 of 2)

The Japanese government has pledged 10 million US dollars, spread over five years, to support Mozambique's Millennium Villages Programme.

The sum was confirmed last weekend by Japanese embassy spokesperson Kenichi Kimiya, during a visit by a Japanese delegation to the first of the country's Millennium Villages, in Chibuto district, in the southern province of Gaza.

The Millennium Village Project covers all of sub-Saharan Africa, and is the brainchild of Columbia University's Earth Institute, headed by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs. The project describes its goal as "ending extreme poverty, one village at a time".

The project document states that "the core idea of Millennium Villages is that villages of approximately 5,000 people will escape from extreme poverty, if they are empowered with proven and practical technologies to improve their farm productivity, health, education and access to markets".

When Sachs visited Mozambique in mid-2006, he and the Minister of Science and Technology, Venancio Massingue, inaugurated the Chibuto Millennium Village. This village, named after the country's first President, Samora Machel, is an outlying, essentially rural suburb of Chibuto town. The area was once an agricultural and livestock company, abandoned by its owner over a quarter of a century ago.

The formally derelict premises are now throbbing with life and activity. Some 300 hectares of fields are farmed, some on a private, some on a collective basis. A manual pump, based on an Indian model, irrigates the fields. An association of village women runs a successful business breeding and selling chickens. Large fish ponds are being prepared where tilapia will be farmed to increase the amount of protein in villagers' diets.

Women are also processing and selling some of the produce. The village now produces assorted jams, preserves, pickles, and juices.

Young children are playing on computers. Like much else in the village they are powered by solar panels (although now power from the Cahora Bassa dam has also reached Chibuto).

Accompanied by Massingue and by the resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Mozambique, Ndolamb Ngokwey, the Japanese delegation laid the first brick for new classrooms at the Samora Machel primary school. The existing classrooms are built of reed, have no windows, and are thus dark and gloomy.

But the village now produces its own bricks, and the solar panels will ensure power for the classrooms. The panels will last for five years or more, and there will be few extra costs in maintaining them. The village health post also depends for its power on solar panels.

Included in the delegation was a representative of the Japanese multinational Mitsui, interested in investing in solar power technology in Mozambique.

So far the government's main financial partner in the Millennium Villages has been the UNDP, and Ngokwey brought along his colleague, the head of the UNDP in Japan, Shumichi Mutara.

The cost of a Millennium Village is estimated at around 400,000 US dollars in the first year, rising to over 450,000 in the second, and falling to about 300,000 in year five. Clearly the village cannot live off foreign donations forever, and so urgent task is to ensure that the productive activities in the village achieve sustainability.

The Japanese money is a significant boost for the project - not only for the two existing villages (at Chibuto and in Lumbo, in the northern province of Nampula), but also for the government's plans to set up three more Millennium Villages in the near future.

"So far what the Japanese government has done is announce the amount", said Massingue. "So we're working on the details to decide where we are going to put the new villages". As a priority, he added, the money should be invested in activities that have a multiplier effect, and help ensure sustainability.

"Before we think of the money, we must think of the ideas", stressed Massingue. "Before the money can be used, we must have the right ideas".

For Massingue, sustainable development must be based on knowledge - and so, at the heart of the Millennium Village, is a Centre for Technology Transfer and Human Development. Here the villagers are taught food processing techniques, and how to turn poultry production (and eventually fish farming) into thriving businesses.

According to Victoria Langa de Jesus, the director of the Millennium Village programme in the Science and Technology Ministry, the commitment of the local community is key to the success of a village, as is cooperation from the district authorities, so that the development of the village can be linked to the district government's own development plan.

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