Factors influencing community participation in NG-CDF projects in Kitui County, Kenya: a case of Mwingi west sub County

Abstract

Community participation mean an open process in which the rights of the community to be informed, to provide comments to the government and to receive a response from the government are met through expression of needs and goals. Effective community participation ensures that government decisions and policies reflect the public interest. It enhances transparency and accountability, project ownership and proper utilization of resources. Despite the Government of Kenya’s (GK) efforts to come up with legislations that provide for people’s participation, there have been challenges in terms of informing the populace on these provisions and creating platforms and enabling environment for involvement. The purpose of this study was, to establish factors that influence community participation in NG-CDF projects, with the case of NG-CDF projects in Mwingi West sub county, Kitui County, Kenya. Among the objectives that will be studied include; establishing how demographic characteristics influence community participation in NG-CDF projects in Mwingi West Sub County, examining the extent to which culture influence community participation in NG-CDF projects. The anticipated significance of this study was to inform policy on NG-CDF projects, the structures of decision making on the use of the devolved funds at all stages of implementation, to help improve effectiveness and value for money. This study targets 35 projects with funding amount of Sh. 800,000 and above. The projects are spread throughout the four wards of Mwingi west sub county, which are Migwani ward, Kiomo/Kyethani ward, Kyome/Thaana Ward and Nguutani ward. From 35 projects the researcher will sample 32 projects. The sample size will be determined by use of Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sampling table which made a sample size of 99 respondents from the sampled projects. Purposeful censuring method will be used to select the NG-CDF manager, 2 NG-CDF committee members’ top officials, and 32 PMC chairperson secretary and a project beneficiary from each sampled project. Further a stratified random sampling method will be used to select the 99 respondents from the four wards in proportionate to their population sizes. Data will be collected using questionnaires with the help of 4 research assistants. The data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics where descriptive summaries like frequencies and percentages will be used, and later presented using frequency distribution tables.