African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

Header Banner

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Politics

Jeffrey Sachs vs. Michael Clemens: the Millenium Villages and Evaluating Impact Assessments – By Magnus Taylor

By Uncategorised
July 6, 2012
3146
0
Share:

Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie: advocates for the Millenium Villages project.

Michael Clemens likes evaluating impact. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that he lives impact evaluation; such is the intensity of his knowledge – theoretical and specific – on this particular avenue of development economics. Clemens’ recent and probably most high-profile work has focused on how impact assessment has been carried out on the Millenium Villages project. He addressed a joint RAS/ODI audience in London on Wednesday 3rd July to talk about the Millenium Villages project and impact assessments

The Millenium Villages project is a joint venture of The Earth Institute at Colombia University (home of Jeffrey Sachs) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The project is most closely associated with Sachs, author of such rock star development books as The End of Poverty (not uncontroversial in itself – see William Easterly’s review) and on occasion to be spotted consorting with actual rock stars such as Bono and actress Angelina Jolie.

So, projects conceived under Sachs’ brand of Big Plan solutions can be an easy target for development naysayers. However, Clemens isn’t really one of these, he professes that his critical assessment of aspects of the Millenium Villages Project reveals “an incredibly sad story” where “no one wins” – the implication being that Clemens isn’t making criticisms of the project because he wants to, but rather because, as ODI Director Alison Evans pointed out, “this matters – this is a lot of money.”

What is Clemens saying?

The Millenium Villages (MV) projects constitute 14 different locations in rural Africa where poverty is being fought at village level towards achievement of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). The project’s own literature states that it fights “˜the root causes of extreme poverty, taking a holistic, community-led approach to sustainable development.’ Clemens contention is that impact assessment has been carried out with such a lack of rigour or basic independence of those conducting assessments, that any claims for the success of the programme are at best dubious, and at worst false.

Impact assessment in the development “˜industry’ is nothing new. According to Clemens “˜randomisation’ is all the rage right now, but randomisation – essentially comparing a group of people who did receive the benefits of a particular development programme with a group who didn’t – does not mean rigour. In the case of the MV programme, no “˜control’ villages that were totally without the benefits of such developmental inputs were studied. There seems to be some contention over whether “˜control’ villages would be possible, or ethical, with the MV project originally asserting that they were not.

In addition, a major contention of Clemens is that a comparison with the base-line of development in the Millenium Villages ie before the projects began, fails to take in to account that many African countries have experienced high levels of economic growth in the last 2 decades, which has been the major cause of improvement in development indicators, notably child mortality. Despite some claims, later withdrawn by the Millenium Villages project, it was found that child mortality in the Villages was declining at about the same rate as it was in the broader districts/regions and countries.

The riposte of Sachs and fellow Millenium Villages advocate Prabhjot Singh stated that “with communities, there are no true controls – life changes everywhere, in the MVs and outside them.” Which when it was published in October 2011 was described by David Mackenzie – Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank – as “˜baffling.’ For a more detailed piece on the academic back-and-forth as it took place in October last year, there’s a good piece on the development blog View from the Cave.

So, why is this seemingly technical discussion between development geeks interesting/relevant to people with a wider interest in contemporary Africa? And by extension, why did the RAS and ODI invite Michael Clemens to talk about his views on MV and impact evaluation? As mentioned before, for projects that cost vast amounts of money, and in a climate where there isn’t a never ending pot of aid money to spend, it matters how we use it. Therefore it matters that we assess the effectiveness of projects properly. Would aid donors be better off spending their money and political capital on something that is proven to work eg bed nets to stop transmission of malaria by mosquito?

Impact assessment should also force us to assess what impact development assistance is having in relation to the broader economic changes that are at present constantly championed by optimistic commentators.

Clemens’ criticisms of impact evaluation and the MV projects have seemingly created some tension and bad-feeling between a number of economists with a stake in either camp. As was evident at the RAS/ODI meeting, much of this comes down to whose figures you find most credible, which for the non-specialist, can become somewhat bewildering.

To read Michael Clemens’ presentation in full click here

To watch a video recording of the event click here

Magnus Taylor is Managing Editor, African Arguments Online

Previous Article

Africa Rising: when will the West join ...

Next Article

Libya’s Election Forecast: More Uncertainty – By ...

Uncategorised

0 comments

  1. Michael Clemens 6 July, 2012 at 18:20

    Magnus, thanks for your interest in this subject. I’m extremely grateful to RAS for co-hosting and for the time and thoughts of everyone who watched and participated.

    I want to clarify one thing that is incorrect in the post above. There is no doubt or controversy about “whose figures are more credible”. The Millennium Villages Project has been forced to admit, by our work, that its figures were false. The editors of the journal determined this, and they eventually admitted it themselves.

    The principal result of their flagship research product on child mortality (the central outcome in their own evaluation protocol) was discovered by myself and Gabriel Demombynes to be false. Upon learning of this, the world’s leading medical journal, The Lancet, forced the project to retract this finding. While they had been announcing that child mortality fell much more rapidly at the project sites than nationwide, it was revealed—only through our efforts—that the fall in child mortality at these sites simply matched the overall nationwide fall occurring at the same time. Since then, Jeffrey Sachs admitted that we were correct and that the numbers published by the project had been wrong. The project’s head of monitoring and evaluation lost his job over this incident.

    In the presentation I was trying to be diplomatic and kind, so I did not place too much emphasis on these facts, which have irreparably damaged the credibility of this project. But apparently I was so diplomatic that the truth was not clearly presented. So here I am spelling it out in starker terms, for clarity.

    Thanks again for the writeup and for your engagement in the debate!

  2. Enrique Mendizabal 7 July, 2012 at 06:59

    There are two processes at play here. That the MV are not delivering as they claim to be and the value of impact evaluations themselves. Careful analysis of the intervention can tell usnalotnabout it’s effectiveness, often enough to make a decision. In some cases though IEs can be useful, but we should not forget that they can be rather expensive themselves.

    As with the intervention we need to be careful about the research methods we choose.

  3. David Richard 9 July, 2012 at 12:57

    The presence of Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie for this Good Work really inspire others to come forward and help the poor and eradicate poverty from our society.

Leave a reply Cancel reply

  • Farming near the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. Credit: Andrea Moroni.
    EritreaEthiopiaPoliticsTop story

    Resolving the Ethiopia-Eritrea border: What actually needs to be done?

  • Politics

    The Diaspora can help fuel Rwanda’s Technology and Digital Ambitions – By Sean Obedih

  • Politics

    Call to Lift US Sanctions from Sudan Deserves Praise not Derision

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81664
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Popular articles

  • Judges in Francois Beya Kasonga's trial in the DR Congo are set to pass a verdict on 23 June.

    The unseen trial of Congo’s “phantom spymaster” and what it means

  • Dating apps are popular ways in which people in Nigeria find dates.

    “The minority of the minority”: Dating while queer…and with a disability

  • Donated breast milk in a refrigerator at St Francis Hospital Nsambya in Kampala, Uganda. In November, the hospital launched the country’s first breast milk bank. Credit: Patricia Lindrio/GPJ.

    Saving lives and broken hearts with breast milk in Uganda

  • Dr Kanda at the Lwano mobile screening camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Credit: Xavier Vahed-DNDi.

    Africa-led progress on neglected tropical diseases needs boost in Kigali

  • Evangelista Kanohili sits outside her home in Sheema, Uganda, March 15, 2022. Kanohili has been experiencing on-and-off infestations of jiggers, a small parasitic flea that burrows into the skin and can make it too painful to take care of daily tasks. Credit: Apophia Agiresaasi/Global Press Journal.

    Uganda: The tiny flea making it painful for people to walk and work

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
Cleantalk Pixel
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
African Arguments wants to hear from you!

Take 5 minutes to fill in this short reader survey and you could win three African Arguments books of your choice…as well as our eternal gratitude.