Effect of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation towards Sustainability of Donor Funded Food Security Projects in Rwanda: A Case Study of Rural Community Support Project Gasabo District, Rwanda

In developing countries like Rwanda, the successive governments unsuccessful attempts to create a food secure nation by increasing agricultural production and improving access to food to all its citizens through policy interventions and the regulation of food markets have resulted in certain regions in the country experiencing frequent food shortages that often culminate into famine situations whenever there is drought in Gasabo district. This situation is often characterized by a gross decrease in household income, and increased levels of malnutrition.  As such it has attracted the interventions of a host of donor funded projects which seek to channel food stuffs to the most affected populations. However, despite the inarguable relevance of this kind of intervention, in most cases the food security projects collapse after the withdrawal of NGOs hence they lose sustainability especially after handing over the projects to the grantees. Participatory Monitoring and evaluation in food security projects primary purpose is to allow project teams to run projects effectively, ensuring they have the desired results for beneficiaries (ACF, 2011).This research project sought to investigate the effect of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation towards sustainability of Donor funded Food Security Projects in Rwanda. The Specific objectives of the study were to analyze the effect of beneficiary involvement in development of M&E tools on RCSP project sustainability, to determine the influence of beneficiary knowledge of performance indicators on sustainability of RCSP project and to assess the effect of beneficiary participation in data collection and analysis on RCSP project sustainability. The study targeted residents of Gasabo district who have benefited from the Rural Community support project (RCSP) Kajevuba marshland. Descriptive research design was used; a sample of 94 respondents was selected through simple random sampling. Data was collected through a questionnaire, a conceptual content analysis was used to process data and results were presented in prose form. A multivariate regression model was applied to determine the relative importance of each of the aspects of independent variable with respect to the outcomes. The findings indicated that beneficiary participation in development of M&E tools, formulation of objectives and performance indicators and data collection process were significant in influencing project sustainability. The correlation and regression analysis indicated a moderate positive association between the three independent variables and project sustainability. From the results, the study recommends that project managers should involve beneficiaries in each and every stage of project execution right from development, planning, implementation and measure of performance more so in development of M&E tools, objective formulation and data collection for them to realize project sustainability.