INFLUENCE OF MONITORING AND EVALUATION PRACTICES ON PROJECT PERFORMANCE IN COUNTIES: THE CASE OF MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA

Projects are great ways to take up strategic business changes. However projects have not performed as well as expected probably due to deficiencies in monitoring and evaluation. Monitoring and evaluation are vital components of project success as they imply overseeing the process of implementation and at the same time judging the worth of the project. The purpose of this study therefore was to investigate the influence of monitoring and evaluation practices on project performance in counties, with special reference to Mombasa County Kenya. More importantly, given that devolution in Kenya was meant to improve service delivery at the county level through the implementation of projects, a review of literature reveals deficiencies in studies on monitoring and evaluation practices on the performance of projects in counties in Kenya. This study was based on four objectives; to establish the influence of stakeholder participation on project performance, to examine the influence of capacity building on project performance, to determine the influence of budgetary allocation on project performance and to examine the moderating influence of politics on the relationship between monitoring and evaluation practices and project performance. The theoretical foundation of this study was based on the Participatory theory, theory of change and Resource Based View. Empirical literature was carried out sequentially as per the study objectives. A descriptive study design was employed using a sample of 271 respondents. The questionnaire was the main data collection tool and was based on a five point Likert scale items. The tool had an acceptable reliability coefficient of 0.69. Data analysis was done by statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 22. The findings revealed that there were significant and positive associations between stakeholder participation and project performance, between capacity building and project performance and between budgetary allocation and project performance. Politics was also seen to have a moderating effect on the relationship. However, the relationships were weak indicating that there were other factors affecting project performance. The conclusion therefore, is that stakeholders need to be involved, capacity building done and adequate funding is provided for projects. The study however recommends for further exploration of other factors associated with project performance since there is evidence of other variables interfering with the association between the independent and dependent variables. Key words; Stakeholder participation, Capacity Building, Budgetary Allocation, Project Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Politics CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study Project practitioners recognise that projects are the best way to take up business changes (Turner, 2009). Accordingly, business success worldwide is pegged upon success in projects. According to Buttrick (1997), projects are carried out with an aim of supporting the effecting of business strategies. Consequently, for organisations to have any success, they need to make sure that their projects do first succeed. This means therefore that there is increased pressure from stakeholders including governments, the public and the private sector among other stakeholders for good project governance, accountability in project work and transparency in how the project is undertaken. There is supposed therefore to be greater developments in effectiveness and delivery of greater results from project work (Porter & Goldman, 2013). This calls for improvements in undertaking monitoring and evaluation practices in projects. The activity of monitoring is concerned with regularly having a check of whether or not an intervention is rolling on as planned while evaluation is concerned with establishing the worth of an intervention (Kusek & Rist, 2010). Both monitoring and evaluation (M & E) practices are therefore powerful tools for public management that would be used to give useful feedback required to improve how governments and organizations realize outcomes. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) (2011), the activities of M & E do offer significant support to project implementation via providing the requisite details for making decisions, organizational learning and sharing of knowledge. M & E on national projects further provide the needed feedback to the economy for economic development and policy interventions (Mugo & Oleche, 2015). After perceiving the major role that M & E plays in national economies, nations came up with agencies that were devoted to M & E. According to Lopez, Rivera, Lycia and Hwang (2010), South Africa and Colombia among others have reinforced their regulatory structures to expect regular scrutiny and assessment to ensure public dissemination of information. The nations of Spain, Chile, New Zealand, Australia and India are examples of countries that have adopted inventive M & E tools in order to strengthen the budgeting and planning of their activities. According to Lopez, et al. (2010), and Mackay (2007) Chile’s story is worth being classified a success story. Chile carries out a broad and comprehensive government M & E system aspects. The country embarks on an ex ante cost-benefit analysis in all their public projects, gathers performance indicators in all public projects, and carries out a comprehensive management reporting annually for public disclosure purposes. Chile carries a meticulous impact evaluation as well as a public spending review. Colombia, the other success story, employs quite a big number of various indicators, takes hard measures on flops and posts all accountability. In Australia, a formal evaluation planning essentially lists all major government programs that the ministry intend to evaluate on an annual basis. The relevant ministry must involve that of finance in these activities. Each programme is required to be evaluated at least once in a span of 5 years. In addition, in Australia, each ministry’s project objectives are reviewed jointly by both ministry and treasury. According to Lopez, et al., (2010) Uganda is a success story too in M & E in Africa. Uganda has had a number of M & E successful systems and initiatives. A case in point is the 1990s programme known as Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS). In partnership with the World Bank then, Uganda created the PETS program in 1990s as a vehicle to track the proportion of funding flowing from the central government down to basic schooling institutions. A survey conducted on the programme had earlier established that just a paltry 13 percent of the central government money did in actual fact trickle down to primary schools and that 20 percent of the teachers’ salaries were unaccounted for. The stakeholders then mounted so much pressure that the government had to eventually take action. All the survey findings on the public funds and expenditure were made public as a way of being accountable. This action seemed to bear fruit as the two follow-up PETS found that now lesser funding could not be accounted for. Additionally, there was an improvement in the flow of the nonwage funds by a massive 90 percent. Lopez et al., (2010) conclude that PETS helped increase the amount of funds reaching primary schools by a significant margin. Use of M & E in Uganda therefore demonstrated that managers of funds were held accountable as there was significant improvement in both funds absorption and utilization. Apart from Uganda, Kenya has also been extensively involved in M & E. History indicates that Kenya has had some form of M & E since 1980s in its projects and programmes. As observed by Mugo and Oleche, (2015) the District Focus for Rural Development (DFRD) of 1983 was created in such a manner that beneficiaries would be able to monitor the funding and the activities the fund was meant for. Recently, Kenya has made M & E a crucial performance management tool that aims at trimming down economic risks and uncertainties. As the case was in Uganda, the M & E activity has been undertaken to track various government programmes and projects. M & E is widely employed on projects in Kenya (Mugo & Oleche, 2015). For example, the National Integrated Monitoring and Evaluation System (NIMES) was created in 2004 and was tasked with a responsibility of tracking policy, programme and project implementation during the Economic Recovery Strategy period ending 2007 (Andersson et al, 2014). The NIMES system was further used to track the performance of Medium-Term Plans (MTPs) of the Kenya Vision 2030, Kenya’s economic blueprint. Though it was not yet at its maturity, according to Anderson et al., (2014), NIMES was expected to focus on providing information to policy makers so that the policy makers would be able to make informed decisions. Kenya has also lately placed M & E across all government and department functions in various forms including in the office of the Controller of Budget and the office of the Auditor-General who are supposed to evaluate the governmental on the use of budgetary resources. For M & E to have any effect on performance of projects a few key components must be incorporated in it. The theory of stakeholder participation holds that that stakeholder participation is vital and therefore has a positive relationship with project performance and must therefore be incorporated in any M & E system (UNDP, 2009). Stakeholder participation is realized where stakeholders share in the process, share in the control measures as well as share in the corrective measure being employed. Equally, the Resource Based View (RBV) holds that resources, in this case, budgetary allocation, affect project performance (Jurevicius, 2013). The resources need to be adequate, relevant and timely. The RBV also hold for capacity building as factors affecting M & E of programmes since this is a resource. Training the stakeholders may be d