Blog 2

1. Radelet believes that the good news about Africa is that many of its countries are not alone in breaking away from the history of economic and political despair, as he states in Emerging Africa. For a long time, Africa has been limited to a similar story of the continents dark past. On MillenniumVillages.org it states, “Africa has the greatest proportion of people living in extreme poverty.” Radelet argues that countries like Ghana, Mozambique, Mali, Tanzania, and Cape Verde are changing the narrative by having these things that he calls good news: more trustworthy governments, increasing incomes, improving investment, healthcare and education opportunities among other things. The Millennium Villages Project is trying to help.
2. The Millennium Villages are villages in Africa aimed at fighting poverty from a small, community-led scale. I chose the two villages Tiby, Mali and Koraro, Ethiopia. I decided to look closer into these two villages for many reasons. Both Tiby and Koraro are found in countries which are existing Millennium Villages. They have a similar population number and schools in their respective areas. Tiby, Mali has a population of about 75,000 people, while Koraro, Ethiopia has a population of about 68,000 people. A big difference in these villages is the number of health recourses around. In Koraro there are 14 health centers and 352 places for counseling, health, and wellness services. Tiby has much less at 8 health centers and 155 places providing counseling, health and wellness services.

• Tiby was chosen to be a Millennium Village, because it is one of the poorest areas in Mali. Koraro is also at the top of the list of poorest areas in Ethiopia. Mali struggles with crops due to the little rainfall it receives each year. This has led to the area to having a child mortality rate and the majority of the population underweight and unhealthy. Koreo’s problems emerge due to its geographic location. Also receiving little rainfall, this piece of northern Ethiopia is surrounded by dust land. Koreo also has a lack of roads leading to a disconnect to the outside world. Koreo’s main goals were to improve the abilities of transportation and heighten number of recourses produced, creating more jobs. Tiby created a drip irrigation technology and planted 13 vegetable gardens to combat their goal of helping the malnourishment of the village.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AS-ADevH7k
• Watch the video above to check in on the millennium village of Koraro, Ethiopia taken in 2010.

• Jeffrey Sach‘s approach of integrated development was attacked and criticized. When you look at the Millennium Villages Project, it’s hard to confidently know that these countries it is based in would not have had changes and successes without the project. Another criticism is that the villages looked at have nothing to be compared to, like a piece of a country that is not under the development plan. Many critics say that there is little evidence to back the statement that the project was successful in helping the villages.

• I think it’s interesting and important that the Millennium Villages set a goal of including and promoting all types of individuals to be active in the community and to succeed, which they highlighted under the website column titled Local Ownership. This mirrors how minorities are fighting to get represented in the United States in things like the media, television, and movies today.

By: Victoria Travers