Abstract:
Community participation in implementation and development projects has become a
topical agenda. Morogoro District is one among the districts in Tanzania where
Participatory Agricultural Development and Empowerment Projects implemented. The
main objective of the study was to assess the factors influencing community participation
in PADEP community projects. Specifically, the study sought to: determine the level of
the community’s participation in PADEP community projects, examine the community’s
attitude towards PADEP community projects and determine the overall impacts of PADEP
community projects to the community. Across-sectional research design adopted for
undertaking the study. A multi-stage sampling was employed whereas purposeful
sampling technique used to select four villages i.e. Kiziwa, Mtombozi, Tulo and Kongwa,
followed by proportional sampling to get households from each village, and random
sampling method to obtain a sample size of 138 households. Qualitative and quantitative
methods were used to collect primary data by administering questionnaires, undertaking
focus group discussions and key informants’ interview. Quantitative data were analyzed
by the statistical package for social sciences, and qualitative data were analyzed by using
content analysis. The study findings revealed that the level of participation in PADEP
community projects was relatively low especially in project identification and designing
stages. Nevertheless, about 93.5% of respondents had positive attitudes towards PADEP
projects because of associated benefits, including rise of household income. Study results,
also indicated that implemented PADEP community projects made some impacts to
households’ livelihood, include assets ownership, income as well as food security
improvement. Furthermore, some independent variables had statistical significant
influence on community participation, including respondent’s previous experience in projects participation (p≤0.05), household size, household income per year before the
project (p≤0.1), level of satisfaction (p≤0.01), awareness / information (p≤0.1) and
existence of village rules and regulation on participation (p≤0.05). In conclusion, there is
positive and strong relationship between previous experience and community
participation; household income and community participation; awareness and community
participation. Considering the importance of community participation, study suggests that
all obstacles including project’s experience, awareness and household income which
hinder community participation should be well addressed by the project implementers for
the success and sustainability of the projects.
