Sustainability and cost

The Millennium Village financing model is built on the premise that, with modest support, Millennium Village economies can transition from subsistence farming to self-sustaining commercial activity.

Funding and implementing a Millennium Village is a shared effort among the Millennium Villages project, donors, NGOs, local and national governments, and the village community itself. Each Millennium Village requires a modest investment of $300,000 per year for five years. This includes a cost of $250,000 per village per year (5,000 villagers per village multiplied by $50 per villager) and an additional $50,000 per village per year to cover logistical and operational costs associated with implementation, community training, and monitoring and evaluation. The other $60 per villager per year comes from village members, local and national governments and partner organizations, making for total funding of $110 per person per year.

The Government of Japan (through its Human Security Trust Fund) and private philanthropic donors (through the Earth Institute at Columbia University) provided the financing the first set of Millennium Villages, reaching some 60,000 people.

The project can be taken to broad scale since the financing needs for the Millennium Villages are fully in line with global commitments to increased official development assistance (ODA). The per capita support to each village is consistent with the international target of 0.7% of rich countries' GNI in official development assistance. This target was agreed at the 2002 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development and has been reaffirmed at the 2005 World Summit. The EU-15 countries have all committed themselves to achieving the 0.7% target by no later than 2015. Moreover, the G8 countries committed at their 2005 Gleneagles Summit to provide $50 billion per year in ODA to Africa by 2010, which is equivalent to roughly $70 per African per year and again entirely consistent with the budget framework for the Millennium Villages. The G8 leaders also recently reaffirmed this commitment at the 2007 summit in Heiligendamm.