Factors influencing sustainability of donor funded projects in Kenya: a case of Kibera Slum Upgrade Initiative in Nairobi County.

Abstract

Sustainability of donor funded projects has become an issue of paramount concern to development projects in Kenya and other third world countries. This is because many projects do not live to achieve the set objectives instead they go down after donors pull out. Donors spent a lot of resources in projects only to end up with projects that do not serve the need of the target community and this is due to lack of project management guidelines that sustains the project beyond the donor life. In Kenya, the project donors have tried to emphasize the importance of project sustainability by engaging the local community in all project processes. The study sought to find out the factors that affect the sustainability of donor funded projects and was guided by four objectives namely: to investigate the extent to which the cost of living influences sustainability of donor funded projects, to examine how project monitoring and evaluation influence sustainability of donor funded projects, to analyze how stakeholder involvement and participation influence sustainability of donor funded projects and to determine the extent to which human capacity building influence sustainability of donor funded projects. The study was carried out in Kibra Constituency where the government of Kenya through the ministry of housing started a project in 2002 that aimed at upgrading the housing structures in Soweto, Kibera slums. The Government of Kenya executed and managed the project while the UN-HABITAT and Cities Alliance were main funders of the project. Soweto East zone A was the project site and it has 1200 tenant families who were supposed to benefit from the project. The research study adopted descriptive research design with the use of questionnaires and interviews as primary tools of collecting data. The sample size was 109; 92 being the tenant families and 17 the Settlement Executive Committee. Review of relevant literaturehelped to reveal the gaps that need to be filled for one to ensure donor funded projects are sustained beyond the withdrawal of donors andshould achieve the set objective.The findings of the study indicated a positive correlation between the independent variables which are ; cost of living, Project monitoring and evaluation, Stakeholder involvement & participation and human capacity building and the dependent variable which is sustainability of donor funded project. This project taught the project beneficiaries to take care of the project as their own even after the donors have left or when the project is completed.