It was spearheaded by Earth Institute (Columbia University), with operations overseen by the Millennium Promise  a semi-autonomous Government of Ghana (GoG) agency, and SADA. The Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr Anthony Akoto Osei said the project aimed to address problems of health, gender inequality among others. He said that it is the aim of  President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo Addo to make the transformation of the rural economy a key objective and has initiated a number of policies and programs in that direction which include the Planting For Food and Jobs, One District One Factory and One Village One Dam.

Dr Akoto said that government believes it is not enough to introduce policies and initiate programs but it is important to monitor and evaluate them in order to achieve the desired goals.

Jemimah Gordon-Duff from the DFID said that evidence plays a critical role in informing policy making and also helps understand which policies work. She said that Ghana is one of the few Sub-Saharan African countries to overcome extreme poverty which she said is a huge and important achievement.

She, however, noted that poverty is still high in rural Northern Ghana which is why the UK rendered support to the Millennium Villages Project in areas such as West Mamprusi and Mampruga in Northern Ghana. She said that for Ghana this evaluation has come at a critical time when the President envisions a self-reliant Ghana.

She said that Ghana Beyond Aid must address issues such as why despite record economic growth, inequality is rising with increasing concentration in the rural North.

She said that the findings of the project should therefore contribute to national debate not just for Ghana Beyond Aid but how Ghana can step up to address inequalities.

Dr Chris Barnnet a partner from Itad , presented an overview of the report, its impact on poverty and the Millennium Development Goals as well as itsimpact on sectors such as agriculture, health and education. Dr Barnett said that there was a noticeable change in the MVP areas over the period with road and electricity impacts. There was also a positive impact on wealth and savings that is,income saved rather than spent though the impact on saving was not large.

He said that productivity in the project villages also rose by 38 per cent in relation to comparison villages. Some health indicators also improved such as figures for severe malaria, nutritional status of kids and rehabilitation of some health facilities and Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS).

A statement in the executive summary of the report said "we believe to date, our evaluation is the most statistically valid, comprehensive and qualitatively informed assessment of impact of the MVP".

 Another statement read "overall, the project had a statistically significant impact of seven out of the twenty eight MDG outcome indicators- which, at a headline level, has some consistency with the retrospective evaluation of 10 MVP sites, where one third of its targets were met (Mitchell et al. 2018). In Northern Ghana, the MVP did not however achieve the MDG target to reduce extreme poverty and hunger at the local level (Goal 1), although reducing poverty on this scale is very hard to achieve within a five-year period."

The full report, including full references is available from http://itad.com/knowledge-and-resources/MVEval