Paul Ogula’s scientific contributions

Introduction The Millennium Development Goal Centre for East and Southern Africa is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and supports and implements the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in twelve cluster sites in ten African countries – Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia (The Millennium Village Project, 2008). According to the UN Millennium Project Report (2005), the project was implemented, to provide immediate evidence that, by empowering communities with adequate resources, people in the poorest regions of rural Africa could lift themselves out of poverty in five years, and meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Millennium Villages were designed to demonstrate how the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could be achieved in rural Africa through community-led development. The Millennium Village (MV) initiative works directly with the respective communities, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and national governments to show how rural African communities could lift themselves out of poverty and achieve the MDGs (Millennium Villages, 2006). Their farm productivity, health, education, and access to markets could be enhanced, while operating within the budget constraints established by international agreements for official development assistance if they have access to proven and powerful technologies (The Millennium Village Project, 2008). The World Bank (2006a) informs that each of the 12 clusters of villages was located in a distinct agro-ecological zone. These include arid or humid, highland or lowland, grain producing or pastoral so as to reflect the range of farming, water, and disease challenges facing the continent and to show how tailored strategies can overcome each one of them. The villages were located in hunger " hotspots " where chronic hunger is widespread, often accompanied by a high prevalence of disease, lack of access to medical care, and a severe lack of infrastructure. They were also located in a reasonably peaceful nation governed by an accountable government (Millennium Villages, 2006). In Kenya, the Millennium Village is located in Yala Division, Siaya County. Millennium Villages offer a scalable model for fighting poverty at the village level and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The approach can be expanded from the village to district level and eventually to countries across Africa (UN Millennium Project Report, 2005). The Millennium Village effort was explicitly linked to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and addresses an integrated and scaled-up set of interventions covering food production, nutrition, education, health services, roads, energy, communications, water, sanitation, enterprise diversification and environmental management. The project implementation focuses on participatory community decision-making. For example, at each village, specific committees and community members identified and evaluated possible interventions supported by a scientific team and local partners. Together they created a package of village-specific interventions that were deemed most appropriate and cost effective. They also produced a community action plan for the implementation and management of these interventions. The Millennium Villages initiative was linked to national – level processes to ensure that the success could be scaled up by governments (World Bank, 2006a). Effect of millenium village primary school meal project on enrollment rate and attendance of pupils in yala division, Siaya County, Kenya