Millennium Villages | About the Villages

Background and history

Key Activities

Village descriptions

Koraro, Ethiopia

Sauri, Kenya

Dertu, Kenya

Mayange, Rwanda

Sustainability and cost

Local Ownership

Scaling up and expansion

FAQ

In the News

Mayange, Rwanda

Population	20000
Villages	4

The Millennium Village cluster in Rwanda is located in Mayange, a sector of Bugesera District located about 40 km south of the capital, Kigali. In a country known as the “pays des milles collines” (“land of 1,000 hills”), the terrain around Mayange is flatter and drier than most of Rwanda. The area suffers from sporadic rainfall and declining soil fertility, leading to endemic poverty, illness and a lack of economic opportunity. The project began working with an initial 5,000 people in Kagenge, one of Mayange’s five subdivisions in early 2006. The population was facing impending famine because of failing rains and a poor harvest the year before, and the health center was severely lacking in staff, medicines, equipment and supplies, and had no electricity or running water.

Unlike most of rural Rwanda, where individual homesteads are scattered across the hilly landscape, Mayange has several umudugudus, or settlements, of closely spaced dwellings, which the government built to house returnees after the 1994 genocide. Nearly 14 years after the genocide, Bugesera and Rwanda as a whole are intently focused on rebuilding and reconciliation.

Village Characteristics by Sector

Declining rainfall over the past five years has made productive agriculture challenging. Following a drought in 2005, when the project arrived in January 2006 the team worked with UNICEF and the World Food Programme to facilitate the establishment of an emergency feeding center for severely malnourished mothers and children.

When the Millennium Villages project began, Mayange Health Center was attempting to serve the local population despite having inadequate nursing staff and virtually no medicines or equipment, as well as no running water or electricity, even though power lines passed a few hundred meters away. HIV prevalence was estimated to be the highest in the nation at 13% (though the government has since revised those figures down into single digits). At the time nearly one in five children died before age 5. At the beginning of the project, Mayange Health Center, with a catchment of roughly 25,000 people, was seeing fewer than 750 patients a month. With simple, cost-effective interventions, Mayange Health Center which had 6,146 total outpatient visitors in all of 2005 consulted over 4,000 outpatients in just one month. All of this is helping to dramatically reduce under-5 mortality, ensuring healthy mothers are delivering healthy babies, and reversing the impact of limited access to care.

Primary schools are overcrowded, with classes as big as 80 children; the teachers lack books, supplies and training. The costs associated with secondary education are such that most parents are unable to pay for their children to attend school past the primary level.

The lack of accessible drinking water forced villagers to spend hours each day retrieving what their family needed to survive. This time-consuming process diverts effort from other important activities, such as education and farming.

Intervention Highlights

In addition to the many programs in agriculture, education health and infrastructure, many women are undertaking additional income-generating activities such as basket weaving. The Imasirire (sunrise) basket weaving cooperative comprises more than 200 women who are learning basket weaving and business techniques, leading to additional income for their families. The project is also helping the community access microcredit. Speaking to the tremendous success of the MVP in Mayange, the Government of Rwanda has announced plans to scale the Millennium Villages project to all 30 districts under its Vision 2020-Umurenge initiative, part of the national development strategy that is taking the project to unprecedented scale.

Agriculture: Increase crop yields, decrease hunger and diversify crops

By applying targeted, science-based interventions and maximizing community leadership and participation, the villagers of Mayange went from chronic hunger to a bumper harvest in the first year of the project. Farmers have also made great progress in combating soil erosion and harvesting rainwater. Village farmers are now diversifying into high-value crops including cowpeas, cassava, groundnuts, mushroom, and chickpeas and are planting fruit trees such as avocado, mango and pomegranate trees. Additionally, farmers are planting beans and sweet potatoes to sell at nearby market for extra income. Given the persistent drought in Mayange, diversification to include dairy and fish farming will provide good opportunities to improve nutrition and increase income.

Health: Improve access to basic medical services, improve maternal and child health, and combat the spread of major diseases

The health clinic is booming with patients now that the MVP has upgraded the clinic, constructed new rooms and provided trained staff, equipment and medicines. Plans are underway for a new maternity ward and a laboratory. The Mayange cluster’s community health workers are trained in reproductive health and a malaria treatment program to diagnose and treat the disease at the household level. The utilization of insecticide-treated bed nets has led to a significant drop in the number of patients seeking treatment for malaria at Mayange clinic.

Education

More than 75 classrooms have been rehabilitated by the MVP and plans are underway to construct new classrooms. In partnership with the World Food Programme, the Mayange cluster serves daily school meals to more than 5,500 children. In partnership with Ericsson, a new computer lab was launched in Mayange primary school in 2008. The lab, with ten computers, is a resource for both teachers and students and created excitement throughout the community about the introduction of Internet technologies and improved access to information.

Infrastructure

Ericsson has constructed a cell tower for Internet connectivity in the Mayange cluster, which has significantly improved connectivity. Several entrepreneurs have opened Internet kiosks for small business and community use, and 100% of Mayange’s households now have cell-phone coverage. Thirteen water sources were completed in 2008, serving 500 people and plans are underway for construction on a major piped water system to provide water for most of Mayange’s residents. The Government of Rwanda has completed work on a major road connecting Kigali with Burundi. The new road significantly improves access to the cluster and the number of people living near an all-weather road. some community institutions have been connected to electricity and grid work continues to connect even more.

Business opportunities and income generation

Many women are undertaking additional income-generating activities such as basket weaving. The Imasirire (sunrise) basket weaving cooperative comprises more than 200 women who are learning basket weaving and business techniques, leading to additional income for their families; the baskets are being sold to visitors and many have been exported internationally. The project is also opening up the community to access to microcredit. Over 75 percent of farmers in Mayange took out a loan for agriculture inputs such as seed and fertilizer for the long rains in 2007, thereby reducing dependence on outside financial assistance. All farmers who took out a loan were required to prove that their entire family had health insurance, and the project provided subsidies for those who could not afford the insurance, which has helped ensure financial access to health care and a dramatic increase in the number of people seeking care.