Theses and Dissertations Collection

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    Factors influencing community participation in planning andimplementing agricultural development projects: case Matongoro cattle auction project in Kongwa District, Tanzania
    (Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2024) Fredrick, Geofrey Kamugisha
    In Tanzania, different community development projects in various sectors including agriculture have been formulated and implemented following a bottom-up approach to reduce poverty and food insecurity among community members in our country. However, in many cases, the impact of such projects has not been significant due to various reasons including poor participation of the targeted population in the process. This study using the Matongoro cattle auction development project in Kongwa as a case investigated the factors influencing community participation in planning and implementing agricultural development projects. Specifically, identified the social-economic factors that influence community participation in the planning and implementation of agricultural projects, assessed the level of community participation in the planning and implementation of Cattle auction projects, assessed the strategies used in community participation at the community level and last to assess the respondents’ attitude of their participation in project planning and implementation. Methodologically, the study adopted a cross-sectional research design whereby a questionnaire-based survey was used to collect primary data from 150 randomly selected respondents. The above was complemented by four (4) focus group discussions and nineteen (19) key informant interviews purposively selected. The study was founded on three theories; Participation theory, Social capital theory and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Content analysis, descriptive statistical analysis and binary logistic regression model were used to analyse qualitative and quantitative data respectively with the aid of Index scales and the Likert scale to attain more precise results. As the study findings revealed that nearly 90% of respondents had low participation. In addition, the critical factors which were found to significantly influence community participation in cattle auction development projects at p>0.05 were income level, number of cattle owned, age, awareness, experience of participation in projects and sex. Additionally, the study findings show that the non-participatory approaches were mainly followed in engaging community members in the area. The study results also show that the attitudes of community members toward the need for their participation were positive but they perceived negatively the approaches used for their participation in the process of the project cycle. Based on the findings it can be concluded that the project implementer utilize a non-participatory approach (top- down approach) as means of participation among the project stakeholders during the project implementation as there was inadequate accessibility of information sharing, collective decision-making and meetings that were found to be the most severe limitation of possessing facts and information. Also, the study concluded that the level of participation in the project by community members was very low, as there were low social relationships and poor cooperation among the agro-pastoralists and project implementers. Therefore, the study recommends that the government should design ways to increase local community participation throughout the project cycle to ensure the success and sustainability of community projects and community development. It also recommends the use of participatory approaches for ensuring the active participation of community members in the designing and implementation of community development projects.