Sauri Millennium Village

The outcomes of the SMVP's interventions have been varied since the start of its implementation in 2005. In order to evaluate the performance of the SMVP, baselines were established using either the conditions of the area prior to the project's execution or the conditions of areas in close proximity to Sauri.

Agricultural productivity limitedly increased after farmers received fertilizers and improved seeds, and training on diversifying their crops. As a result, about 10.1 more bags of crops per hectare were being produced on average by Sauri farmers than those outside the village.^[1]: 123 However, whether or not this increment in crop yields increased the farmers’ disposable income to reduce poverty levels is not well understood, because more indicators are needed to track how income expenditure changed over the lifespan of the project. Nevertheless, crop diversification on farmland to produce more than just the region's staple maize crop, has helped to spark a transition from subsistence farming to income generation.^[15]: 85

The provision of universal primary education was one of the satisfactory outcomes of the project.^[1]: 111 Although the Kenyan Government's set of goals to develop the Siaya district cannot be disregarded, the SMVP's strategic location unquestionably attracted greater inputs of investment. This led to improvements in four key areas: free primary education, increased school infrastructure, provision of school meal programs, and improved teacher training.^[1]: 131 With the enrolment raised to 98% by 2010, all of Sauri's 20,400 primary school children are reportedly receiving daily school meals consisting of locally grown food, as more sustainable food practices are developed within the community.^[16] In addition, the ranking of the Kanyuto Sauri Primary School has significantly gone up from being in the top 200 to being in the top 10 in the district. This is largely attributed to the better nutritional status of the student body at the school.^[1]: 70 However, it has been reported that some children are left out of the lunch meal program if their family fails to provide a designated amount of maize and bean contributions per pupil.^[8]: 43

Previous to the initiation of the SMVP, the population was victim to critical rates of mother-child mortality, undernutrition, anemia, malaria, and intestinal parasites, amongst other health issues.^[2]: 16777 The prevalence rate alone for HIV AIDS was 30% and 43% for malaria in the population before interventions began.^[6]: 99 In response, the MVP introduced the Sauri Community Dispensary to provide healthcare services that were much nearer to access as compared to the hospital they normally had to travel to.^[2]: 16777 To tackle the spread of malaria, 513 mosquito nets were distributed to households in 2005.^[17]: 4 Their performance was not as high as expected, due to the fact that only 57% of villagers used the nets following the indications of the healthcare workers that provided the nets.^[17]: 4 Nonetheless, they were used on a regular basis and those that were still in good condition five years later presented a statistically low 5.26% prevalence of malaria parasites in one of the household members using the nets.^[17]: 8 As a result of the initiatives carried out to reduce the prevalence of malaria and other health concerns particularly in children, public health improved significantly.

With the development of infrastructure and access to public amenities, the expectation for the price of land was that it would increase significantly as compared to the rate of increase of the area just outside of Sauri.^[13]: 385 However, these prices have been rising at comparable rates, suggesting that the price increase within and outside of Sauri is not necessarily due to the outcomes of the project, making its impact in this regard somewhat ambiguous for development agencies.^[13]: 385

Grain banks and storage facilities were set up prior to harvesting seasons in order to reduce the amount of postharvest losses that resulted from the surplus of crop yields. Because productivity increased, farmers had surpluses they could store in these grain banks and improve the food security of the community during lower productive harvesting seasons.^[15]: 88 These storages were improved in the second year of the project to maintain optimal conditions of the grains over longer periods of time.^[15]: 88

One of the key concerns of the MVP was to engage local people and create “bottom-up”, sustainable processes of development.^[18] However, many foreign experts and leadership structures were introduced to Sauri.^[6]: 5 Although training sessions and interest groups experienced high participation and fostered local community leaders, they did not represent the traditional village administration.^[1]: 118 Luo power structures in the Sauri sub-location are organized through a chief, village elders and specific age and gender roles that would sometimes interfere with implementations of the MVP.^[1]: 93

The notable impacts on the community and change in Sauri's social network structures were some of SMVP's unintended consequences. The development initiatives in Sauri became sources of networking. Many interest groups, cooperatives, and development organizations became involved and formed stronger ties within the community.^[6]: 58

Agricultural groups were formed and provided participants with opportunities to create personal networks that initially generated more collaboration and further boosted locals’ expectations for the project. Once they learned to benefit from the formal services, they opted to strengthen them, rather than return to previous, less skilled groups they had before the project.^[6]: 62 Community members also held "barazas", which became their preferred setting for organizing community meetings, voicing any concerns, or solving disputes between each other. Village elders had a key role in these interactions, as well as in bridging communication between government agencies and MVP participants.^[6]: 63 Many villagers also had religious affiliations, which became another form of networking that the MVP deeply impacted. Church organizations could unite community members and act as safe locations for them to receive what was perceived as organized and transparent support.^[6]: 64

Nevertheless, as the project continued villagers developed a growing concern at the declining trend in collaboration. The lack of trust in the outcomes, failed promises, lack of transparency with MVP resources among the leaders, and inaccessibility by the MVP team were all constraints that began to inhibit collaboration.^[6]: 66 For example, Jeffrey Sachs began to arrive with police escorts to Sauri, which raised fear amongst the villagers and distanced them from other leaders and project managers.^[6]: 67

Given that time is a major variable in the emergence of benefits yielded by the project's interventions, some of the outcomes of the SMVP will take longer to be capitalized into fungible value.^[13]: 386 MVP investments discontinued in 2015 once the term for intervention expired and the village was expected to be self-sustaining. However, a number of performance indicators suggest that the village was not prepared to continue operations independently.^[6]: 28

One of the largest criticisms of SMVP is that it is a top-down approach to development that lacks consultation and a feedback loop.^[5] The “Big Five” development interventions that Sachs identified for Sauri—basic health, education, communication services, safe drinking water, and sanitation—were seen as one-size-fits-all solutions to poverty.^[5] SMVP claimed to have incorporated local knowledge through consultation, but that was largely inadequate. In surveys, villagers were assumed to be a homogenous group of similarly poor individuals, and their responses were taken as mutual. This method did not consider that Sauri villagers were not all equally poor or poor in the same way, and therefore had varying interests, wants, and needs.^[19] For example, large farmers that produced goods for the world market were more business-oriented, as opposed to small subsistence farmers.^[20] Unable to consider these divergences, SMVP's initial goals were not comprehensive enough.

By introducing a model that benefitted wealthy farmers, and systematically disadvantaged poor and subsistence farmers, agricultural interventions exacerbated social inequalities. SMVP introduced a package of hybrid seeds and fertilizers to improve agricultural productivity. These packages were initially handed out free of charge, but were later only available to be purchased. Small subsistence farmers did not have the money to buy these packages, while wealthier farms had more purchasing power and continued to reap the benefits of higher crop yields.^[5] Despite an overall welfare gain of this intervention, the gains did not trickle down to the poorest of the poor in Sauri. Instead, by neglecting to consider social relations and long term consequences, it further harmed relations between villagers by exacerbating .

Sauri may also not have been the best place to receive a Millennium Village designation. The objective of MVP was to reduce poverty in the poorest communities in the world, but Sauri had been receiving funding and assistance throughout the 1990s. Since the early 1990s, the International Center for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF) and Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) have been conducting research on soil fertility in Sauri.^[5] Further, Africa Now, a UK non-profit group, began funding the building of spring-protection cisterns in Sauri in the late 1990s.^[5] If the MVP model were to be truly tested for its potential to eradicate poverty in the most dire communities, some critics, like the journalist Victoria Schlesinger, believe that it would have been more logical to make Millennium Villages out of destinations that have never received external funding or support.^[21] While the response has been that Sauri was chosen because of its high levels of poverty and hunger despite having received assistance, critics have accused project managers of choosing Sauri due to its higher potential for success, which would bode well for the MVP model.^[22]

Weak impact evaluation has also created quite a stir among critics and observers of SMVP alike. Careful project assessment is a necessary mechanism for weeding out project inefficiencies, improving resource allocation, and measuring up project outcomes against its goals. However, MVP data has very strict access, and independent researchers are not allowed to access these files or request interviews with MVP staff members to gain a better understanding of the project.^[5] As a result, the public has continually questioned the MVP's data collection methods. In June 2010, a public midterm evaluation of MVP impacts was released for five Millennium Villages, one of which was Sauri.^{[23]: 306–307} This report compared Sauri's post-intervention circumstances with pre-intervention conditions. It did not take into account what may have occurred in Sauri in the absence of MVP intervention. For example, if Sauri had not been designated a Millennium Village, the government may have implemented similar initiatives, like building schools, improving infrastructure, allocating money to vaccination, or improving teacher training programs.^{[23]: 306-307} Such changes, if successful, would have also improved standard of living and reduced poverty in Sauri. Because MVP impact evaluation reports did not consider these counterfactuals, MVPs have also been criticized for exaggerating their successes.

At the time of writing it is 2024, 9 years on from the project completion. It is notable that the project evaluations were carried out in the few years after project completion. They focus, as the earlier part of this article does, on progress in particular fields such as Health and Education.

Whilst this is important and there are plenty of lessons, the big-picture question receives very little attention. The Millennium villages were a demonstration project. They aimed to show that with Sach's approach, villages could become independent of further aid. His thesis was that these villages would move to a situation where they were self-supporting and the improvements made by 2015 could be maintained and built on without further aid.

The 2nd leg of his theory was that, once the success of the projects had been demonstrated other villages could follow the same path and poverty would be eradicated on a sustainable basis, village by village.

The last words of the Sachs/Angelina Jolie Diary video say "1 down, 999,999 to go." So the test of the success of the demonstration is not whether improvements were made in specific areas, but whether other villages followed the same path. 9 years on from the project completion, the situation appears to be that the 999,999 do not exist. Accordingly, the thesis that the methodology could be rolled out to a huge number of villages looks to be incorrect.