Community Resilience Capacity, Environmental Factors and Performance of Food Security Projects in Loima Sub-county,turkana Kenya

Abstract

This research study wass designed to examine community resilience capacity on the performance of food security projects as moderated by environment factors in Loima sub-county, Turkana County, Kenya. The study was anchored on social identity theory, resource dependency, the theory of constraints and the organization control theory. The study adopted mixed research approaches to examine how community resilience capacity on the performance of food security projects. Correlational and descriptive research designs were adopted for this study. The study sample size is 491 respondents who were randomly selected from a target population of 16,517 households using the Slovin's formula. Data was collected from the respondents using questionnaires, interview guides, and focused group discussions. Qualitative data was analyzed by checking for themes and patterns then linking them to the objectives and hypothesis. Quantitative data was analyzed for both descriptive and inferential statistics. Presentation of descriptive data was mainly in percentages, frequency tables, arithmetic means and standard deviation. The inferential statistics was obtained using Pearson’s Product Moment correlation and from simple and multiple regressions while F-test was used to test hypotheses. The findings showed that for objective one r = 0.275 indicating that there was a weak positive correlation between social capital and performance of food security projects. The adjusted R2 = 0.2055 implying that social capital explains 20.55% of the variations in performance of food security projects, an F-value of 37.12 which was statistically significant since p = 0.000 < 0.05. This was an indication that there was a statistical significant relationship between social capital and performance of food security projects, hence the null hypothesis was rejected. The second objective had r = 0.203,R2=0.1757,F=30.49,p=.0000, hence the second hypothesis was rejected and concluded that social safety nets has a significant influence on performance of food security projects. For objective three r = 0.315,R2=0.1589,F=26.94,p=.0000, hence the third hypothesis was rejected and concluded that disaster management skills has a significant influence on performance of food security projects. For objective four r = 0.268,R2=0.1835,F=32.39,p=.0000, hypothesis four was rejected and concluded that community resources capacity has a significant influence on performance of food security projects. For objective five, r = 0.458,R2=0.1633,F=21.10,p=.0000, hypothesis five was rejected and concluded that environmental factors has a significant influence on performance of food security projects. For objective six r = 0.219,R2=0.2349,F=43.57,p=.0000, hypothesis six was rejected and concluded that community resilience capacity has a significant influence on performance of food security projects and lastly for objective seven r = 0.651,R2=0.2296,F=25.56,p=.0000, hence hypothesis seven was rejected and concluded that the relationship between community resilience capacity and performance of food security projects depended on environmental factors. In conclusion, the study findings indicated that for better performance of food security projects in Loima Sub County aspects of community resilience have to be comprehensively addressed. It is therefore, recommended that in order to build a resilient community, investments should be prioritized for social capital strengthening, improved social safety nets interventions, establishment of disaster management skills and promotion and effective utilization of the productive assets. Local food production, processing and transformation for a stabilized food system should be prioritized to enhance self-reliance and improve overall community resilience in the long term. Consequently, a similar study but with probably a longitudinal approach and with different study sample and contextual factors should be carried out to explore more resilience determinants beyond the variables in this study.