DETERMINANTS OF PERFOMANCE OF AGRICULTURAL PROJECTS IN KENYA: A CASE OF NYERI COUNTY

Abstract

Agricultural projects play an increasingly important role in terms of employment, food security, wealth creation, and the development of innovation in an economy. However, their contribution to the national economy is still relatively small due to many challenges encountered by these projects and as a result, many projects do not reach their full potential and fail to perform as expected. The purpose of this study was to investigate determinants influencing perfomance of agricultural projects in Kenya. The target population under study was 75 agricultural projects in Nyeri County.The study adopted a census survey design to collect primary data.The study used a questionnaire to collect the required primary and secondary data. A pilot study was conducted to pre-test the validity and reliability of instruments for data collection. The raw information was analyzed to yield qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative data was analysed with the use of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 21 and excel. The variables were regressed at 5% level of significance to establish their relationship. The analysis showed that stakeholder invlvement had the strongest positive influence on perfomance of agricultural projects. In addition project team was positively correlated to perfomance of agricultural projects. The study established that project team and stakeholder involvement had a positive impact on the overall performance of agricultural projects. It was established that projects were not able to manage their costs, execution time, project risks and the project quality were not able to not only execute their projects on time, at cost and on schedule affecting the productivity. A review of literature indicated that there has been limited amount of research on determinants of performance of agricultural projects in the Kenyan context. Thus, the findings of this study should serve as a basis for future studies on performance of agricultural projects. This study confined itself to the project team and stakeholder involvement. A comparative study should be carried out to compare whether the findings also apply for other projects in different areas in order to validate whether the findings can be generalized to others in Kenya.