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At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, which have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.The eight MDGs are global targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions—income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter and exclusion—while promoting gender equality, education and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights, the rights of each person on the planet to food, health, education, shelter and security. Those global targets must be translated into local action.

By early 2004, concerns had been raised that most of Africa had gotten off track with respect to achieving the MDGs, so the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York and the UN Millennium Project (UNMP) established the MDG Technical Support Centre in Nairobi in July of that year.

In 2006, the MDG centre West & Central Africa (WCA) was established in Bamako, Mali to support WCA countries to develop and implement operational strategies aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goal and to provide close and decentralized scientific and technical leadership, guidance and direction to support the development of strategies, methodologies, and technological- and policy-related interventions of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), the Millennium Cities initiative (MCI) and MDG-based development processes at the regional, country and district (meso) levels. The Centre’s flexible operational and staffing procedures are designed to ensure a rapid and effective response to requests.

Initially, the Centre was working in Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal with an increased request of expansion to other countries in the region such as Benin, Central African Republic, Congo, Cameroon and the Gambia.

The Centre works at three complementary scales - National level, through support provided to processes related to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-based strategies, planning and implementation. Particular emphasis is placed on i) needs assessment and costing, ii) design and implementation of cross-cutting and sectorial interventions, iii) reinforcement of synergies within and across sectors; and iv) dialogue among key stakeholders such as the civil society, the public and private sectors and the donor community; -  Sub-national level to support local Governments develop and implement MDG-based local development plans, strategies and interventions so as to capitalize on lessons learned from national MDGs-based processes and the Millennium Villages concept. This process is anchored within the framework of the ongoing decentralization processes, and; - Local level to assist and empower pilot rural and urban African communities to lift themselves out of their poverty trap and achieve all MDGs through the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) and the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI).

Since 2008, many requests for support from governments in the sub-region for the implementation of the Millennium Villages project on their territory continue to be received by the MDG Centre. As a result, new sites have emerged in Liberia (kokoyah District), Cameroon (Maroua and Meyon-messi) and Benin (sites to be determined)

The sites in Liberia, Cameroun and Benin are being implemented directly by UNDP.

The most significant request of expansion of the MV concept was expressed by the governments of Mali through the 166 Communes Initiatives and Nigeria by scaling up MV concept across 36 states and 113 local governments.