An island of success in a sea of failure? The MDGs and Sauri Millennium Village in Kenya

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For a number of decades, foreign aid-supported poverty reduction and development concepts, and policies and programmes developed by development agencies and experts implemented since the 1950s, have produced limited short-term and sometimes contradictory results in Kenya. In response to this problem in 2000, the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was in many respects a tremendous achievement, gaining unprecedented international support. The MDGs model has since become the policy of choice to reduce poverty and hunger in developing countries by half between 2000 and 2015, being implemented by the Millennium Village Project (MVP) ‘Big-Push’ model, seemingly designed as a ‘bottom-up’ approach. Poverty reduction and sustainable development are key priorities for the Kenyan government and the Kenya Vision 2030 blueprint project. The MDGs process, enacted as the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in Kenya for poverty reduction, is now at the centre of intense debate within Kenya. It is widely recognised that foreign aid maintained MVP and sustainable development through the UN and local efforts, especially in their present form, have largely failed to address poverty in Kenya. Furthermore, not enough was known about the achievements of the MVP model in real-world situations when the MVP model interventions were applied in the Sauri village. The aim of this thesis was to learn from the Sauri Millennium Village implementations in agriculture and non-agriculture, education and health programmes. They are all inter-related and could assist in developing a more comprehensive and practical strategy for the Kenya Vision 2030 blue print for poverty reduction in Kenya. Further, it was most important to know whether the MVP approach worked before the Ministry of State for Planning, National Development and Kenya Vision 2030 committed significant funds in replicating the MVP development framework in eight other villages in Kenya. This research examined the case of Sauri using ethnographic mixed methods involving qualitative semi-structured interviews with residents and key informants to explore the impact of the MVP. The specific focus was on the processes employed in implementing the MVP approach, and its effects and outcomes, having regard for the MDGs paradigm’s truth claims about poverty and poverty reduction in Sauri, the voices of the villagers, and an understanding of the experiences of those engaged in, or affected by, the MVP. The major findings indicated that the MVP to some extent had empowered Sauri villagers in agricultural and non-agriculture, education and health programmes with significant foreign aid funding. At the same time some challenges emerged, due in the main to a lack of understanding of the complexity of poverty, and the traditional structures at village levels where new MVP power structures were introduced. Further, the absence of a clear exit strategy in Sauri put the sustainability of the MVP in question, as well as the veracity of implementation of MDGs in other villages in Kenya, as stipulated in the Kenya Vision 2030. Such reservations made other future development programmes, potentially problematic. As the current MDGs expire in 2015, this study contributes towards a richer understanding of the dimensions of poverty, sustainability and foreign aid from the villagers’ perspectives, valuing their knowledge, priorities, and the outcomes of implementation of the SMV project. The thesis main contribution stems from presenting an account of how the villagers themselves assess and experience the interventions, and this constitutes a valuable addition to development debates. Similarly, the study adds valuable insight that the SMVP has replaced existing power structures and that it is thus - despite all its self-proclaimed descriptions as grassroots and bottom-up - another top-down development intervention. In addition, the study provides valuable lessons about the implications of time-bound short-term MVP development approaches with a strong focus on the end goal, recognising that insufficient attention has been paid to two main aspects of sustainability – namely, post-implementation administration and operational sustainability. The study adds value by including the voices of the villagers in the MVP agenda for poverty reduction, and in the end contributing to the MVP’s re-evaluation and improvement, suitability and sustainability, at national levels and in the global debate regarding the shaping of the Sustainable Development Goals.