If the rich world poured huge amounts of money into villages across Africa, would it make a difference?

For some, sending financial aid to Africa is simply seen as a waste that will go into the hands of corrupt officials and dictators. But for the economist Jeffrey Sachs, the argument that aid has poured into the world's poorest continent for decades without much result is a false one - he says that there has simply not been enough.

In speeches, articles and his 2005 book "The End of Poverty", Sachs has been saying for years that massive outside aid investment is needed to lift Africans out of their vicious cycle of poverty - but he says it will work. And he has convinced a lot of people. Pop star Bono cites him as a mentor and his ideas inspired in part the Live 8 concerts of 2005 and have helped boost Africa aid funding.

To help prove his point, he has secured funding from a mixture of state donors and others for a massive cash injection into 11 "millennium villages" - $100 for each inhabitant every year for five years. Put that way it sounds relatively small but it amounts to some $2.75 million for the Kenyan village of Sauri, the most advanced single project.

The aim is that while most of Africa is on course to desperately miss the Millennium Development Goals set out in 2000 by the United Nations to reduce child mortality, promote literacy and a range of other targets, the 11 villages like Sauri should surpass them.

In Wilson Quarterly, a magazine devoted to policy issues, Sam Rich writes about visiting the village on which much of Sachs' credibility depends.

There have been simple but obvious gains. Mosquito nets have been distributed, halving the proportion of villagers with malaria. Harvest yields have risen two and a half times after $50,000 were spent on fertilisers, with 10 percent of the harvest going towards school lunches for the children. Improved nutrition seems to have improved the children's performance too.

There are equally obvious problems, many of them hauntingly familiar from other major development programmes. Voting for the committees that control the spending has been along obviously tribal lines, there are hints of corruption, villagers sell on their mosquito nets and fertiliser and come back asking for more. A truck bought to promote trade has simply disappeared.

There are also distinctive problems that seemed to stem from simply plunging money into one village and not the surrounding area. Increasing food production has slashed prices from neighbouring farmers who cannot take advantage of the free fertiliser and so whose production remains low. And few inside or out of the development world dare criticise the programme for fear the donors will pull out.

But this is a brave project. It's easy to overlook or forget about the impact of such simple measures as mosquito nets - and also easy to forget that that many African countries and communities simply lack the money for them.

If it succeeds - or does not completely fail - then it will be harder to claim that aid does not work, at least to the south of the Sahara. But even if it fails, the chances of rich countries upping their aid budgets by 10 times to channel the same amount into every village in Africa looks relatively poor.

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