A United Nations experiment designed to boost health, agriculture and education in African villages has shown “remarkable results” but could be difficult to replicate at a national level, an independent study has found.

The Millennium Villages project – brainchild of Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York – has sought to showcase the benefits of heavy investment using 12 groups of settlements across 10 countries. In a new study, the Overseas Development Institute, a London think-tank, found there was “considerable evidence of significant improvements at household and village levels in the health and agriculture sectors”. But it said the project’s reliance on highly trained staff meant it could be hard to replicate at a national level.