Capacity Building and Performance of Donor-Funded Projects in Nairobi City County Kenya

Abstract

Donor-funded projects have been associated with unprecedented delays, cost overruns, irregular scope changes, and beneficiary dissatisfaction which has been attributed to weak institutional human resource capabilities, and weak monitoring mechanisms. The goal of the study was to assess how capacity building affected the success of projects funded by donors in Nairobi County. The study sought to find out how technical competence, managerial competence, and governance competence affected the performance of donor-funded projects in Nairobi County and was based on four theories: diffusion of innovation, transformational learning, resource dependency, and knowledge-based theories. A descriptive survey design was adopted. The target population was 55 donor-funded projects and the units of observation were 311 project personnel. The research employed a purposive random sampling approach to picking 30% resulting in a sample of 94 people. This study's primary data included both quantitative and qualitative information. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed in data analysis. Besides, multiple regression was used to determine the association between the dependent variables and the independent variable. The study revealed that technical, management, and governance competence all exhibited a favorable and significant influence on the success of donor-funded projects in Nairobi County. The study determined that staff training was in place among the projects, but it was not consistent and there was no policy to govern it. It is recommended that the management of donor-funded projects in Nairobi County should spend more on contemporary technology, innovation, and capacity to improve project efficiency and effectiveness.