Factors Influencing The Performance Of Horticulture Projects In Kenya; A Case Of Bahati Constituency, Nakuru County

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze factors influencing the performance of horticulture projects in Bahati Constituency, Nakuru County, Kenya. The lenders decision to fund a given project must be based on a good understanding of variables that may pose as threats or turn into opportunities to them it is on this basis that This study sought to make an empirical examination into managerial skills, community participation and projects‟ monitoring and evaluation as some of the critical factors that affect the successful implementation of the projects funded through project financing. An in-depth analysis of aspects pertaining these factors will be carried out. A brief review of projects outside Kenya such as Algatech in Israel and Bell Pepper Production Project in Botswana proofs that complete execution of a project funded through project financing is a possibility. This study therefore employed the theory of organizational effectiveness and examine view of various scholars on this theory over time. This study limited itself to horticultural projects in Nakuru County, Bahati constituency. The survey used descriptive survey study in which a sample 50 project managers were administered with questionnaires. The data collected was summarized using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and analysis was done using the same package to produce frequency and correlations that was used to produce the findings. The means and the standard deviation of influence of management skills of managers on the performance of the projects were also calculated. In this context, skills requirements, roles assignment, additional trainings, targets, and decision making had means of 4.0682, 3.8295, 3.3864, 3.7614, and 3.9318 respectively. Since all these means were within the bracket range of 3.5 and 4.5, it indicated that the respondents tended on average to agree in relations all these metrics for financial performance. On the other hand, the standard deviation of skills requirements, roles assignment, additional trainings, targets, and decision making had means were 0.73961, 0.83352, 0.79411, 0.85761, and 0.79936 respectively. This indicated that the responses were moderately distributed. The means and the standard deviations of community participation were undertaken. The effective communication, decision making, collaboration and support had means of 4.1136, 3.5000, 4.1591 and 3.8182 respectively. This implied that on average the respondents tended to agree in relations to all the community participation since they had a mean between 3.5 and 4.5. On the other hand, effective communication, decision making, collaboration and support had standard deviations of 0.65094, 0.99424, 0.72534, and 1.11979 respectively. This indicated that the responses for all the metrics were moderately distributed except for the local community actively support the project which had a standard deviation of 1.11979 indicating lack of consensus. The study found positive and statistically significant relationship between management skills and horticultural performance. There was also a significant statistical relationship between community participation and horticultural performance in Bahati constituency. Finally, the study found a statistically significant relationship between monitoring and evaluation, and horticulture performance. The study recommends that greater emphasis should be placed on management skills as a means of influencing performance of the horticulture projects in Bahati Constituency.