ABSTRACT

There have been numerous complaints by scholars, researchers, professionals and consultants that CDF projects are not performing. The speed at which the government deals with the grey areas of CDF funded projects management will determine the realization of the Kenya Vision 2030 whose main objective is to transform Kenya’s economy through the well-intended devolved CDF fund projects. Devolution of resources to the decentralized government is a national Government move. The issue is the management and organization of the CDF projects because politicians control the disbursement of funds, the running of the projects and dictate what is to be monitored and evaluated on a given project and in addition what the stakeholders should be filled in on. some counties also lack total consideration for CDF projects since some CDF projects are based on the political benefit and not the overall good for the county therefore the constituents are denied their right to development as they are left thinking it is a favor or goodwill of the politicians. Hence this study sought to find the influence of Monitoring and evaluation practices and performance of constituency development fund projects in Kiambaa constituency, Kiambu County, Kenya. The study was guided by the following specific objectives; to establish the influence of community participation, to determine the influence of management style, to establish the influence of political patronage and to assess the influence of HRM practices on performance of Constituency Development Fund projects in Kiambaa Constituency, Kenya. The study’s target population was the 132 projects in the constituency. The study adopted a census data collection procedure design since the target group was small and manageable. Selfadministered questionnaires were used for data collection. Data collected was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables. Multiple regression analysis with the aid of Computer Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) software was used to analyse the data and findings presented using frequency tables for analysis. Overall, Political patronage had the highest effect on performance of CDF projects in Kiambaa. The findings of this study indicate that 65.6% of the changes in M&E on project performance variables could be attributed to the combined effect of the predictor variables. The study summarized and concluded on the influence of monitoring and evaluation of constituency development fund projects and recommended that the government should ensure the community (beneficiaries) involvement in all M&E activities throughout the project life cycle, capacity building for the community and an independent body set up to perform project audits.