Factors Influencing Sustainability of Donor Funded Youth Agri-Business Projects in Kakamega County, Kenya

The study was motivated by the fact that there are numerous efforts in the recent past of phasing out the community based projects but there is failure on the part of the communities in managing or sustaining the projects. The study was conducted in an attempt to establish the factors that influence sustainability of donor funded youth projects in Kakamega County, Kenya. The study specifically examined how Leadership Capabilities, Training, Youth Participation and Monitoring and Evaluation influence sustainability of Donor funded youth Agri-business projects in Kakamega County, Kenya. It was informed by the Theory of change (ToC), Sustainability Theory and Positive Youth Development Approach (PYDA). The research design used was descriptive research design with the target population being the youth agri-business projects funded under the USAID/YYC program. The identified target population is unique in a special way since they were involved as direct beneficiaries of the Program in Kakamega County. The total numbers of projects were 233 in the entire county. 30% of the projects were sampled where the chairperson of the projects were purposively sampled as the respondents. The research focused on primary data that was collected from questionnaires. The researcher used the Cronbach’s Alpha to assess internal consistency reliability for the five-point Likert scale items with 0.7 and above being the cut-off point or acceptable range. The study used descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse the quantitative data. From the findings, majority of the respondents agreed that Leadership Capabilities, Training, Youth Participation and Monitoring and Evaluation affects sustainability of donor funded youth agri-business projects, it is eminent that the youth play a significant role in project management and sustainability. In conclusion therefore, if organizations wants to develop, there is great need to meaningfully involve the youth in the development of every facet of the project. The recommendations from the study are; project practitioners should involve youth as partners and diversify in their project approaches, develop and implement sound policies and establish effective partnership for sustainability. It is therefore important that young people be given opportunities in organizational management and participation for sustainability of projects. Thus, it is recommended that youth in Kakamega County be involved and included in work as a collective in project sustainability. The aim of this study was to fill the gap in the incomplete literature on youth participation in project sustainability. The study sought to contribute to the progress study on Youth and project sustainability, add to the scanty empirical literature and to subsequently fill the knowledge gap.