On Tuesday, August 28th, 2012, His Excellency, President John D. Mahama
will join Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the eminent Developmental Economist and a
Special Advisor the United Nations Secretary General, and was also a
Special Economic Advisor to the President John Atta-Mills, and others, in Tamale
to officially launch the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in the SADA Area.
The other foreign dignitaries joining His Excellency will be Honorable
Andrew Mitchell, the British Secretary of State for International Development,
and Lord Michael Hasting, Head of KPMG Global Citizenship and a Chairman
of the Board of the UK Millennium Promise.
His Excellency, John D. Mahama will be fulfilling the commitment made
earlier by the late President John Atta-Mills to attend the Event before his
sudden and sad demise on July 24th, 2012. Ironically, the SADA Millennium
Village Project was initiated by His Excellency John D Mahama back in May of
2010 when he was then the Vice President. The story goes that, during the
celebration of the Accra Millennium City launch in January of 2010, Mr.
Japhet Aryiku, a Ghanaian resident in New York City, who is the architect of
the Accra MCI, and a Special Advisor to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, mentioned
to Sachs that, the Northern Region, from where the then Vice President
hails, faces a lot of challenges with poverty and underdevelopment. Without
hesitation, Jeffrey Sachs informed Japhet that he could help, and that he
would like to have a conversation with the Vice President about it. Japhet
then spoke with the Vice President about it and the Vice and Jeff spoke and
met a number of times to discuss how best to incorporate the Millennium
Villages Project model into the SADA development model. The Office of the
President was also informed and the late President Mills readily embraced the
support and assistance offered by Professor Sachs. It was agreed that the
Millennium Village Project model of holistic and comprehensive approach to
poverty alleviation, which includes economic and social interventions, would be
tried in selected areas of the SADA north.
After almost two years of campaigning, and constant reminder and advocacy
from Japhet, Jeffrey Sachs was able to secure a funding grant of $18
million from DFID to start the Project. This news was announced in New York at a
meeting at the Ghana Mission between the late President Mills and Professor
Jeffrey Sachs on December 29th 2011. The project will immediately benefit
over 30,000 people in the selected villages and greatly reduce the level of
poverty. It is expected that the success of this model would lead to its
application in other poverty stricken areas of the SADA ecological area.
The Event is a clear indication of the commitment of President Mahama to
continue the aggressive development of the SADA area and the overall
national economic development program that was started by the late President
Mills.