A report on the success and failure of the "Millennium Villages Project" to end poverty

Book Reviewed: The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, by Nina Munk

This is a brilliant story of Jeffery Sachs, a Columbia University professor who ventures into the real world to cure the illness of poverty. What happens when an abstract economic theory created in an academic environment is applied in real world? Will it succeed or will it collapse. The author is a humanist and an outstanding journalist, follows this new economic-age guru into the wilderness of Africa where he conducts his experiments of "Millennium Villages Project" to end global poverty. The author accompanies him to Sauri, a remote farming village in Kenya, the villages of Ruhira in Uganda and Dertu in Somalia.

Sachs strongly believes in an ethical choice; he is a prophet, a messiah who came to this world to end human suffering. His focus was two billion people who are scarping by when the industrialized societies continue to ignore them. He is sick and tired of academic debates and merits and de-merits of community development theories. The endless back and forth; the equivocating, the calls for more studies/research, and the delays; he wanted action. He was an angry prophet that nothing is done at global level to end poverty. The human suffering caused by the disease, hunger, war, corrupt governments run by despots, environmental destruction, and religious intolerance have all played a role in tormenting human lives. But development experts keep promoting one theory after another, publishing voluminous books and research articles. For Sachs, to dismiss Africa as a lost cause is an easy excuse for not doing anything. Looking for financiers to implement his ambitious project, he contacts billionaire, George Soros who grants his wish with $50 million to fund his project. The plan was to start the project in ten African countries with Soros's full blessings. The initial plan was shaky since the local market has to produce something so that it can sell and become self-sufficient. Labor is cheapest commodity and can be used to make something and sell it to Western nations at competitive prices. But there was a problem, the health barriers in Western nations were so high that you need a change in marketing plans; either produce something to sell to the rest of Africa or even better create safaris and tourist attractions for people in Europe and North America. In freezing winter, they would be too willing to visit the warm climate in southern Africa.

In Dertu, Somalia, the stronghold of Islamic fundamentalism, the author makes a gruesome discovery. On the wedding night of an African friend; how a bride goes through the painful experience of sexual intercourse when her vessel was sewed years ago. The actual sexual intercourse is witnessed by two women who would later come out of the "consummation hut" holding up their evidence, a bloodstained sheet which indicates that the bride was virgin, and everyone rejoice that centuries of Islamic tradition is kept alive one more time. In spite of all the advances made in uplifting the masses of Africa; did it make any difference to women's emancipation? These religious practices are most hurtful to women's rights, says the author. When Guru Sachs came out of his laboratory at Columbia University, did he evaluate the centuries of African tradition and the lack of women's right matters in his dream of economic emancipation? What about his goal of sustainability? A goal defined as the maintenance of "economic progress without a loss of momentum, a drop in living standards or a decline in social services." At the end of the project in the village of Ruhiira, the author asks; did it reach the desired goal? The answer is, painfully, no. With regards to the project in Dertu, disasters struck one after another; droughts, floods, Rift valley Fever, rinderpest, you name it, they had it. In 2011, the drought stricken areas of the Horn of Africa, the worst in modern history, left more Somalis dead than alive.

At the end, Sachs admits that the real world is more complicated, after spending more than $120 million. He says he misjudged the complex shifting realities in the African villages. Africa is not a laboratory; it is chaotic, messy and unpredictable.