The first steering committee meeting held in Yaounde Thursday and validated the working document. The United Nations in partnership with the governments of Cameroon and Japan are finalising moves to kick-start a poverty-reduction and growth-oriented project in the country which will facilitate the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Steering committee members of the project held their first meeting in Yaounde last Thursday February 24, 2011 to map out ways of better implementing the project, which is said to be changing lives already in 15 African countries. The members validated the project’s working document for work to begin in the days ahead.

In a speech during Thursday’s meeting, the Director General of Planning and Regional Development in the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Janvier Oum Eloma, said the project is in line with the country’s Growth and Employment Strategy Paper which, among others, seeks to lift the population out of poverty and underdevelopment. He said since putting in place the eight MDGs in 2000, the government of Cameroon has been adapting several measures to hit the target by 2015 and that the Millennium Villages Project will be a welcome relief. He said the report of the project’s first two generations (it is in the third generation now), gives reason for Cameroon to hope. In Nigeria, the project covers about 113 localities and is reportedly impacting the lives of about 20 million people.

Meyomessi and its environments in the South Region and Maroua 1, in the Far North Region have been chosen as pilot centres for the project in Cameroon. The project’s fact sheet shows that 66 per cent of the population in Maroua 1 Council lives below poverty line, child malnutrition ranging between 12 to 37 per cent with inadequate community development initiatives, with their adverse effects. Reason why the project this year targets capacity-building of the farmers, aid in form of farm inputs, construction of vaccination centres, among others. In Meyomessi, poverty, low agricultural yields and not-so-vibrant agro-pastoral activities, among others, have been identified as some speed brakes to the people’s wellbeing. Reason why the project intends to notably support the putting in place of agricultural cooperatives, rehabilitating and equipping agricultural posts, developing rural roads and modernising agricultural practices. The Millennium Villages Project offers a bold, innovative model for helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

The first phase of the two and a half-year project in Cameroon, to cost 8,519,250 E.U dollars (about FCFA 4 billion) will be jointly financed by the governments of Cameroon and Japan and the UN System. Cameroon is to contribute two million EU dollars, 5,769,250 EU dollars to come from the government of Japan while the UN is expected to chip in 750,000 E.U dollars.