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Friday, August 29, 2008 - Web posted at 8:51:25 AM GMT Mozambique: Japan pledges aid to end extreme poverty THE Japanese government has pledged US$10 million, spread over five years, to support Mozambique's Millennium Villages Programme. |
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The sum was confirmed 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's goal is to end "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. About 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 US$400 000 in the first year, rising to over US$450 000 in the second, and falling to about US$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. Nampa-AIM |
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