Factors Influencing Sustainability Of Affirmative Action Funded Projects In Mt Elgon Sub-County, Bungoma County, Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors influencing sustainability of affirmative action funded projects in Mt Elgon Sub-County, Bungoma County, Kenya. The study specifically sought, to assess how capacity building influences the sustainability of affirmative action funded projects, to examine how funding arrangements influences sustainability of affirmative action funded projects, to establish how management capacity influences the sustainability of affirmative action funded projects, to establish how stakeholder involvement influences sustainability of affirmative action funded projects. This study utilizes descriptive survey design and the target population was 190 of successfully funded projects under the affirmative action fund. The sample size for this study was 123 respondents drawn using Krecjie and Morgan (1970) table and proportionate as propounded by Yamane (1967). The study used questionnaires for data collection and data analysis involved both quantitative and qualitative methods. This entailed organizing the accumulated data to a manageable size, developing summaries, looking at the patterns, and applying statistical techniques to generate information that was used to answer research questions of the study and present the said results in understandable and convincing manner on tables and interpreted according to the study objectives. Quantitative data was analyzed with the help of statistical software called Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) to get the statistical mean to determine the overall trend of data set, standard deviation to measure spread of data around mean. Linear regression was done to determine the relationship between dependent and independent variables as well measure whether those relationships were strong or weak. The study findings show that capacity building influences sustainability of affirmative action funded projects by giving the beneficiaries the chance to understand their project’s strategic direction, provision of intensive training for capacity building on the project to enable them to be better equipped to implement and sustain the projects, making them have a good understanding of resource mobilization which enables them be more effective and efficient, taking them through human resource development programmes and exposing them to exchange programmers and visits to other successful projects for capacity building as well as corroboration with other stakeholders. Funding arrangements affects sustainability of affirmative action funded projects through ensuring that the process and procedure of acquiring funds for affirmative action funded projects is easy and straight forward, promoting the followup process for funding of successful projects which if not done can negatively affect the projects, reducing on the intermediaries that facilitate the funding process of affirmative action projects which may sometimes be longer and could delay the project service delivery and efficiency of the project; that inadequate and/or unavailability of constant funding affects sustainability of affirmative action funded projects and the funding capacity for group funding which greatly affects the retention of technical and competent staff thus impacting on the sustainability of the projects with a mean average. Management capacity affects sustainability of affirmative action funded projects as the study found that the management of affirmative action funded projects in the sub county lacks governance competence, people who are involved in project management and delivery may have inadequate technical competence to handle projects, while business capacity management is a critical factor in effective project service delivery and affirmative action funded projects have adequate functional support system. The aspects of stakeholder involvement and sustainability of affirmative action funded projects are that stakeholder analysis helps in the identification of project participants, they are involved in decision making and participation in projects including cost sharing, stakeholder management is critical to the success and sustainability of the projects, customer relationship management is a key factor in stakeholder involvement in projects and the fact that public relations helps in the attraction and identification of the right stakeholders for the projects. Based on the findings the researcher made the following recommendations: there is a need to create awareness to the project members on general issues concerning the projects; project vision and mission should be at the fore front and an integral part of the awareness process; members of the projects should be involved in the determination of the strategic direction of the project; project management committees should be trained on all aspects of project including financial management, procurement, operations, tariff setting and record keeping; and for effective sustainability of the projects, there is need for provision of adequate financial resources and governance capacity to the management.