The Millennium Villages initiative offers a bold, innovative model for helping
rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty. The Millennium
Villages are proving that by fighting poverty at the village level through
community-led development, rural Africa can achieve the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) – global targets for reducing extreme poverty and hunger by
half and improving education, health, gender equality and environmental
sustainability – by 2015.
With the help of new advances in science and technology, project personnel work
with villagers to create and facilitate sustainable, community-led action plans
that are tailored to the villages' specific needs and designed to achieve the
Millennium Development Goals. In 2007, Ericsson and Columbia University’s
Earth Institute formed a partnership, designed to bring mobile communications
and the Internet to more than 400,000 people in ten African countries where the
initiative is working.
Nearly one billion people around the world live in extreme poverty, or on less than
USD 1 per day. Poverty prevents men, women and children from fulfilling their most
basic human needs and achieving their individual potential. The information and
communication technology (ICT) sector has been identified as a sector with enormous
capacity to support the achievement of the MDGs.
Ericsson has committed to apply its technology and expertise, working in partnership
with the stakeholders on this project: the Earth Institute at Columbia University,
Millennium Promise, the United Nations Development Program and various regional
African operators such as MTN and Zain, and Sony Ericsson. The project will be
exploring the potential of mobile telecommunications and the Internet to transform
rural resource poor communities.
This transformation will be evaluated in cooperation with the Earth Institute,
including the social and economic impact and how the project has contributed to the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
Ericsson’s involvement in this project is a demonstration of its Company-vision to
be the prime driver in an all-communicating world, its support of social- and economic
development through telecommunications, and its commitment to human rights.
To read about the achievements in the Millennium Villages in 2007, download our
2007 CR report.
