Influence Of Public Participation On The Implementation Of County Government Funded Projects: A Case Of Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Past studies on public participation in project implementation in Nairobi County have shown citizen participation is critical to the implementation of government funded projects. However, the strategy has encountered a number of operational and policy challenges hence, the gap between provisions in the legal framework and the actual practice. This study was justified by the fact that most researches carried out in the various fields of public participation have revealed low levels of citizen participation. As a result of these developments, this study seeks to in Kenya, case of Nairobi County. The study was guided by the following objectives; establish the extent to which public awareness influences participation in county government funded projects in Nairobi county, how information access influences public participation in county government funded projects, how stakeholders engagement management influences participation in county government funded projects, and how conflict resolution management strategies can influence participation in county government funded projects in Nairobi county. The study used descriptive design survey method focused on 8 sub-counties of Nairobi. The target populations were members of the general public in the county of Nairobi as provided by the Kenya national bureau of statistics 2009 census report. The target population comprised of all people drawn from Nairobi County. The sampling procedure applied was multistage sampling which achieved 384 respondents. The sampling design used on the county development project managers and administrators was purposive sampling method. Primary and secondary data was collected using questionnaires and document review respectively. Data was descriptively analyzed by with the help of SPSS) version 22.0. The correlation analysis of data showed that access to information variable had the strongest positive (Pearson correlation coefficient = .412) influence on promotion of county project implementation. In addition, stakeholder’s engagement management and conflict resolution management variables were positively correlated to project implementation (Pearson correlation coefficient = .321 & .226). The study concluded that: inadequate structured communication between the county agencies and the citizens, the general lack of transparency and accountability in communicating county government projects, lack of financial and management skills for stakeholder engagement, nepotism, poor organizational capacities and political interferences in public development projects were the main factors that hindered the level of public participation in the County of Nairobi. The research therefore recommended the government to provide appropriate policies to address the ever changing government project implementation trends, increase sufficient resources for policy formulation and implementation of projects, and build a career development ,increased participation guidelines to be reviewed and amended from time to time to meet the needs of the various groups, strategies to facilitate better involvement, to increase the number of people accessing public information on project implementation. Additionally, very little had been done to explore applicable citizen conflict resolution methods to promote smooth project implementation at Nairobi County.