The Idealist
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“an end in themselves”: M. H. Doran, A. R. C. Low, and R. L. Kemp, “Cattle as a Store of Wealth in Swaziland: Implications for Livestock Development and Overgrazing in Eastern and Southern Africa,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 61, no. 1 (February 1979).
“It is the old story of the vicious circle”: Colonial administrator quoted in N. W. Sobania, Background History of the Mt. Kulal Region of Kenya: IPAL Technical Report Number A-2 (Nairobi: UNESCO/UNEP Integrated Project in Arid Lands, December 1979), 179.
Chapter 15. Insha’Allah
“Virtually every society that was once poor”: Sachs, End of Poverty, 315–17.
When a girl is six or seven years old: For a thorough study on female genital cutting in North Eastern Province, see Guyo W. Jaldesa et al., “Female Genital Cutting Among the Somali of Kenya and Management of Its Complications,” FRONTIERS Final Report (Washington, D.C.: Population Council, February 2005).
Chapter 16. I Am Thinking We Are Not Ready for This
“By the end of the conference”: Steven Wisman, “Millennium Villages Conference, Bamako, June 23–27th, 2008: Goal, Objectives and Expected Results,” internal document, 14 May 2008.
“value-cost ratios”: [Geoff Gottlieb], “Value-Cost Ratios,” presentation for the Millennium Villages Project, June 2008. For more on fertilizer use in Africa, including an explanation of why value-cost ratios are often too low to be profitable, see Global Development Network’s Policy Research Paper 3, “Improving the Effectiveness, Efficiency and Sustainability of Fertilizer Use in Sub-Saharan Africa,” June 2012.
Chapter 17. A Very Tall Order
the deal brokered with the World Food Program: Despite the problems in 2008 and 2009, Ruhiira’s farmers signed one final, smaller contract to sell fifty-seven tons of beans to the World Food Program in 2010. Since then, the WFP has made no further purchases of Ruhiira’s produce. In Uganda as a whole, the WFP has struggled to meet its goal: in 2010, purchases from small-hold farmers totaled $33 million, well below the target of $100 million. See Henri Leturque and Jonathan Mitchell, “WFP’s Agriculture and Market Support (AMS) in Uganda 2009–2014: Mid-Term Evaluation,” strategic evaluation report no. OE/2011/019 prepared for the World Food Program, October 2011, x–xi.
the World Bank alone spent $16 billion on agricultural credit: Elizabeth Coffey, Agricultural Finance: Getting the Policies Right (UN Food and Agricultural Organization and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, 1998), 1.
“The inadequacies of rural financial markets reflect real risks”: World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2007), 144.
“If we did it a little on the fly”: John McArthur, interview by author, 14 July 2009.
“a number of factors”: Millennium Villages Project, The Millennium Villages 2009 Annual Report (New York: Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2010).
“several challenges”: Millennium Villages Project, Annual Report: January 1–December 31, 2008 (New York: Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2009).
two postmortem reports: After a year of requests, one of the reports—Mary Nyasimi, “Qualitative Assessment of Sauri Input Credit Scheme: Anthropological Perspectives. Preliminary Results,” Millennium Villages Project, March 2009—was given to me “for background” only. I still await the other report, authored by Ousmane Diouf, about the credit scheme in Mbola, Tanzania.
Chapter 18. I Have Been Failed by the Markets
In the area of health: Millennium Villages Project, “Ruhiira: Master Expenditure Chart, 2006–2009,” internal budget report, March 2010.
A medical staff of just ten: Millennium Villages Project, Harvests of Development in Rural Africa: The Millennium Villages After Three Years (New York: Earth Institute, Columbia University, June 2010), 66.
The number of babies born with the help of a trained birth attendant: Ibid., 66–67.
The project had invested nearly $600,000 in education: Millennium Villages Project, “Ruhiira: Master Expenditure Chart, 2006–2009,” internal budget report, March 2010.
To help Ruhiira’s best students continue their education: Millennium Villages Project, The Millennium Villages 2009 Annual Report (New York: Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2010).
“breeding ground for disease outbreaks”: Jenise Huffman, director of sustainability at Tyson Foods, Inc., e-mail to Theresa Wolters, operations manager of Millennium Villages Project for East and Southern Africa, “Uganda—Hurdles to Overcome Before Getting a Poultry Project,” 4 November 2008.
the pipes would one day make their way to Ruhiira: In November 2010, the pipes finally arrived in Ruhiira and eight months later, in July 2011, the first phase of the system went live with forty public and twenty-seven private water points. Jeffrey Sachs and JM Eagle CEO Walter Wang attended the ribbon cutting.
“economic progress without a loss of momentum”: Millennium Villages Project, “Millennium Villages: Concepts, Sustainability, and Scalability,” draft report, 2007.
Chapter 19. Misinformation and Politics
“cutting deals at a dizzying pace”: Richard Behar, “Special Report: China Storms Africa,” Fast Company, June 2008.
Trade between China and Africa: According to the World Trade Organization, trade between China and Africa totaled $84.21 billion in 2009. Two years later, in 2011, it totaled $132.69 billion.
Tommy Hilfiger: “Tommy Hilfiger Named Millennium Promise’s First MDG Global Leader,” Millennium Villages press release, 23 June 2010.
A British filmmaker was coming to Dertu: Zoe Flood, “Thriving in the Drylands,” documentary film produced for the Millennium Villages Project, 2010.
“formidable pride of the Somali nomad”: Ioan M. Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 1.
jareer, an ethnic slur: Catherine Lowe Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 116.
Chapter 20. A Version of Progress
“marked with jovial celebrations”: Ahmed Mohamed, “Dertu Promoted to the Administrative Status of Regional Division,” Millennium Villages Blog, 18 November 2009.
$2.5 million into Dertu: Internal figures provided to the author by the Millennium Villages Project show that from the second half of 2006 to the end of 2009, the project contributed $1,230,288, while other donors (NGOs and corporate partners) contributed $1,278,568. (In addition, $502,108 came from the government of Kenya.)
“Complain Against MVP”: Ali Abdi Mohamed, “Complain Against MVP,” 2009, personal files of Ali A. Mohamed. Note: The original document lists seventeen bulleted complaints, plus two pages of more-detailed comments.
“hectic excursions from the urban centre”: Robert Chambers, Rural Development: Putting the Last First (Essex, U.K.: Pearson Education, 1983), 8.
“They come, and they sign the book”: Ibid., 12.
“Ils ne savent pas”: Adrian Adams, “An Open Letter to a Young Researcher,” African Affairs 78, no. 313 (October 1979), quoted ibid.
“breathtakingly ethnocentric”: Katy Gardner and David Lewis, Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge (London: Pluto Press, 1996), 14.
Chapter 21. What Mistake Has Ahmed Done?
“The reason Ahmed left us”: Belay Begashaw, interview by author, 17 June 2010.
“Look, these are internal HR issues”: John McArthur, interview by author, 25 June 2010.
paid $8 million for Sachs’s town house: Blair Golson, “The Sachs Appeal: Columbia Buys $8 M. Townhouse for New Econ Star,” New York Observer, 11 November 2002.
Chapter 22. An Island of Success
“an African-born economist who reportedly received scholarships”: Jeffrey Sachs, “Aid Ironies,” Huffington Post, 24 May 2009.
“a stunning transformation of 500,000 lives”: Millennium Villages Project, Millennium Promise 20
10 Annual Report (New York: Millennium Promise, 2011), 46.
“a case study in what is possible”: Ban Ki-moon quoted in Millennium Villages Project, Harvests of Development in Rural Africa, 7.
“The thrilling news is that the communities”: Sachs quoted in The Millennium Villages Project: The Next Five Years: 2011–2015 (New York: Millennium Villages, October 2011), 3.
“Sachs is essentially trying to create an island of success”: William Easterley quoted in Jeffrey Gettleman, “Shower of Aid Brings Flood of Progress,” New York Times, 8 March 2010.
deaths from malaria fell by a third in Africa: World Health Organization, World Malaria Report 2011 (Geneva: World Health Organization, December 2011).
Infant mortality rates dropped sharply: Gabriel Demombynes et al., “Africa’s Success Story: Infant Mortality Down,” Africa Can … End Poverty Blog, World Bank, 7 May 2012.
“Africa could be on the brink”: World Bank, Africa’s Future and the World Bank’s Role in It (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, March 2011), 4.
“The Hopeless Continent”: “The Hopeless Continent,” Economist, 13 May 2000.
the proportion of sub-Saharan Africans living in extreme poverty: From a high of 56.5 percent in 1990, the figure declined to 47.5 percent in 2008. “World Bank Sees Progress Against Extreme Poverty, But Flags Vulnerabilities,” World Bank press release, 29 February 2012.
continued to live on less than $2 a day: The current data report that 562.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live on $2 or less a day. See Chen and Ravallion, “An Update to the World Bank’s Estimates of Consumption Poverty in the Developing World,” 3 January 2012.
“People used to worry”: Charles Kenny quoted in Annie Lowrey, “Dire Poverty Falls Despite Global Slump, Report Finds,” New York Times, 6 March 2012.
“The design of the project makes it impossible”: Michael A. Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes, “When Does Rigorous Impact Evaluation Make a Difference? The Case of the Millennium Villages,” Center for Global Development, Working Paper no. 225, October 2010.
According to a New Yorker profile of the economist Esther Duflo: Ian Parker, “The Poverty Lab,” New Yorker, 17 May 2010.
“Millennium villages don’t advance”: Sachs quoted in Jeffrey Gettleman, “Shower of Aid Brings Flood of Progress,” New York Times, 8 March 2010.
“He adopts this completely anti-scientific attitude”: Duflo quoted in Parker, “The Poverty Lab.”
“The project has claimed large impacts”: Michael A. Clemens and Gabriel Demombynes, “Millennium Villages Project Needs Proper Evaluation,” Poverty Matters Blog, 19 October 2011.
Bernadette Wanjala, and her colleague Roldan Muradian: Bernadette M. Wanjala and Roldan Muradian, “Can Big Push Interventions Take Small-Scale Farmers Out of Poverty? Insights from the Sauri Millennium Village in Kenya,” Center for International Development Issues Nijmegen, working paper, 2011.
“big push”: “The Big Push Back,” Economist, 3 December 2011.
“Who on earth will pay for this”: Lawrence Haddad, “Jeff Sachs: LVP of the MVP?” Development Horizons Blog, 14 October 2011.
“mistaken”: Jeffrey Sachs, “Challenges at the Cutting Edge of Fighting Global Poverty,” Huffington Post, 4 December 2011.
“outlandish”: Ibid.
“reflect[ed] a real misunderstanding”: Jeffrey Sachs and Prabhjot Singh, “Learning in and from the Millennium Villages: A Response to Lawrence Haddad,” Millennium Villages Blog, 16 October 2011. As of February 2013, this post was no longer accessible on the Millennium Villages Blog; however, excerpts (including this quotation) could be found elsewhere on the Internet.
“filled with falsehoods and distortions”: Jeffrey Sachs, “How the Daily Mail Twisted the Facts to Fight Help for the Poor,” Millennium Villages Blog, 7 July 2012.
“This is Nobel Prize–winning stuff”: John McArthur, interview by author, 6 March 2009.
He measured success more broadly: As this book was going to press, the Millennium Villages Project’s director of global communications stated in an e-mail to me that five African countries have announced plans to “scale up the Millennium Villages across the nation,” a development that she described as “one of the biggest successes and ‘proofs of concept’ of the project” and “essential evidence that [the project] is, indeed, hitting its marks.” In fact, while several countries, including Nigeria, Rwanda, and Senegal, have adopted certain technologies and methods used by the Millennium Villages Project, no country has yet rolled out Millennium villages “across the nation.”
Chapter 23. I Cry for Ahmed
“A vision of hell”: “Horn of Africa Drought: ‘A Vision of Hell,’ ” BBC News, 8 July 2011.
He held a Ph.D. in community health: Dabar Abdi Maalim, “The Cultural and Behavioural Determinants of Immunisation Among the Nomadic Somali Community of Garissa District, North Eastern Province,” Ph.D. diss., University of Reading, 1999.
“Mujahideen fighters will force them”: Will Ross, “Kenya’s Incursion into Somalia Raises the Stakes,” BBC News, 17 October 2011.
“artifacts”: John McArthur and Jeffrey Sachs, “Updated Concept Note on the Millennium Villages Project: Scalability, Sustainability, and Early Lessons,” Millennium Promise, draft paper, 2009.
Everywhere in the country people were being squeezed: Fred Ojambo, “Uganda’s Shilling Declines to 18-Year Low on Corporate Demand for Dollars,” Bloomberg, 9 August 2011.
“How can they buy fighter jets”: Kizza Besigye quoted in Katrina Manson, “Uganda’s Museveni Sworn in for Fourth Term,” Financial Times, 13 May 2011.
“What can we do?”: Amadou Niang, interview by author, 10 July 2012.
Chapter 24. It Is What It Is
“Millennium Villages, on Track to Reach 2015 Goals”: “Millennium Villages, on Track to Reach 2015 Goals, Launch Final Phase,” Millennium Villages Project press release, 3 October 2011.
“an inspiring example”: Ibid.
“brighter future”: Ibid.
“investment-worthy business projects”: Ibid.
“The Project will work with each host government”: The Millennium Villages Project: The Next Five Years: 2011–2015 (New York: Millennium Villages, October 2011), 23.
In the first place, the G8 had fallen far short: According to The DATA Report 2011 (ONE, 4 May 2011), 7: “The G7 increased their annual development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa by $11.197 billion between 2004 and 2010, delivering 61% of the $18.227 billion increases they promised in 2005. The increases delivered were largely a result of the US, Japan and Canada surpassing their targets and the UK nearly meeting its very ambitious commitment. Three countries—Italy, Germany, and, to a lesser extent, France—were responsible for most of the G7’s shortfall.” Note that DATA refers here to the G7 (as opposed to the G8) because one G8 member (Russia) had made no commitment in 2005.
Moreover, in 2011, for the first time: The DATA Report 2012: Europe’s African Promise (Washington, D.C.: ONE, 11 April 2012). For details on 2011 foreign aid spending by country, see “Development: Aid to Developing Countries Falls Because of Global Recession,” OECD press release, 4 April 2012.
Congress was calling for still more cuts: Making sense of U.S. foreign aid budgets is difficult because total figures include expenditures unrelated to humanitarian or development aid. “Foreign aid not related to war spending was cut by $2.2 billion from 2011,” according to Susan Cornwell, “U.S. Foreign Aid Escapes Slashing Cuts in Fiscal 2012,” Reuters, 19 December 2011. However, according to the OECD, the cut in the nation’s Official Development Assistance (narrowly defined as disbursements that promote the “economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective”) was around $659 million in 2011. Meanwhile, according to AidFlows.org (a partnership among the OECD, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank), the United States slightly increased ODA in 2011.
“This is a village that’s going to make history”: MTV Networks, The Diary of Angelina Jolie and
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, 14 September 2005.
“Robin Hood tax”: See robinhoodtax.org.
raising America’s minimum wage: Jeffrey Sachs et al., “Time to Raise the Minimum Wage,” letter to U.S. congressional leaders, 23 July 2012, http://www.epi.org/publication/raise-minimum-wage/, accessed 3 February 2013.
“That’s why we’re here!”: Jeffrey Sachs, speech delivered at Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park, New York City, 15 October 2011, video recording at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB_eoUqbKDw, accessed 3 February 2013.
“A World Adrift”: Jeffrey Sachs, “A World Adrift,” Project Syndicate, 22 April 2012.
“To put it simply: tax the rich, end the wars”: Jeffrey Sachs, “The New Progressive Movement,” New York Times, 12 November 2011.
“accomplices to the premeditated asphyxiation”: Jeffrey Sachs, “America Has Lost the Battle Over Government,” Financial Times, 15 August 2012.
“The ancient Greeks called it kakistocracy”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 22 January 2012.
“The people who ‘won’t’ help themselves”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 30 December 2011.
“Incompetent German leadership is killing the Eurozone”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 14 December 2011.
“The ‘debate’ on energy shows the deceit”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 17 October 2012.
“America’s a corporatocracy now”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 17 January 2012.
“Memo to the next president”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter re-post from Columbia University’s Earth Institute (@earthinstitute), 5 November 2012.
“News Corp is neck deep in corruption”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 2 May 2012.
“Washington caters to the rich”: Jeffrey Sachs, Twitter post, 28 December 2011.