The Millennium Villages Project

Danny Wilcox Frazier was commissioned by the VII Foundation and Blue Chip Foundation to document the impact of the Millennium Villages Project in Potou, Senegal.

The Millennium Villages Project, a brainchild of Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, set out to improve the quality of life for villagers living in some of the poorest communities on the African continent. Ambitiously targeting multiple sectors of daily life, such as health, education, and infrastructure, the project operated on a ten-year timeline, which came to a close at the end of 2015.

The initial analyses of the ten-year-long project suggest wide successes. As Joshua Hammer, award-winning international correspondent, writes in his introduction to the MVP book: “New roads…allowed farmers to bring their crops to markets in nearby towns, building a monetized economy. In some villages, cash went to pay for solar-generated power, helping to create a sustainable electrical grid.” Of successes with girls’ education, he adds, it’s “a phenomenon that would have been unimaginable a mere decade ago.”