Project Planning and Welfare of Households: A Case of Biogas Project in Huye District, Rwanda

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the role of project planning on the welfare of the household with a biogas project case in Huye District. This research was guided by three objectives including assessing the role of biogas project budgetary planning on welfare of households in Huye District, to examine the effect of biogas project planning activities on welfare of households in Huye District, and to establish the relationship between biogas project Standard cost and welfare of households in Huye District. This research will be significant to policy makers, future researchers, students and lecturers who will use the results of the study as point of reference in formulating new policies and doing further research in this field of the study. The research was also tracked by project management theory and Becker’s new household economic theory. The study involved descriptive research design, 184 people of whom 105 respondents were drawn by using purposive and simple random sampling techniques as the primary informants of the study. The study findings were collected using questionnaire and interview guide but before actual time of collecting data, these data collection instruments were pre-tested during a pilot study to prove its validity and reliability. The findings of the first objective have shown that the general perception tends to 1.8806 indicating stronger tendency which implies that biogas project budgetary planning affects welfare of households. While the results of the second objective demonstrated that the overall mean is 1.770 which implies that biogas project planning activities affects welfare of households to a very great extent. Lastly, the results of the third object show that there is a strong relationship between project budgetary planning and income generating activities (r=.637 and sig=.000), between project budgetary planning and livelihood diversification (r=.526 and sig=.000), between project budgetary planning and improved standards of living (r=.600 and sig=.000), between project planning activities and livelihood diversification (r=.723 and sig=.000), between project planning activities and improved standards of living (r=.872 and sig=.000), between income generating activities and project planning activities (r=.789 and sig=.000), between standard cost and livelihood diversification (r=.728 and sig=.000), and between standard cost and improved standards of living (r=.904 and sig=.000). This implies that there is a relationship between biogas project planning and the welfare of household in Huye District, Rwanda. Thus, basing on the results, the researcher recommends to rural households to adopt biogas project in order to save time that they spent cooking, to adopt biogas generation for health and sanitation purposes because it helps to ensure better health that is free of diseases related to smoke; and also recommends to the local government to encourage rural households to ensure that those at least with vast land should have biogas generation in their households so that the number of people who own biogas should be increase to ensure welfare of the households in rural areas. Keywords: Construction delays, cost overrun, regional cybercrime center, Rwanda