DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION FLOWS AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT CONSTITUENCY DEVELOPMENT FUNDED SCHOOL PROJECTS IN DADAAB GARISSA COUNTY, KENYA
DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION FLOWS AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT CONSTITUENCY DEVELOPMENT FUNDED SCHOOL PROJECTS IN DADAAB GARISSA COUNTY, KENYA
Abdirahman Ali Rashid - Student, Masters of Arts in Public Policy and Administration, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Edna Jemutai Moi - Lecturer, Department of Public Policy and Administration, School of Law, Arts and Social Sciences, Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
It is undoubtedly that public participation in the delivery of government-funded projects such as National Government Constituency Development Funded projects is low and daunting. Therefore, to ensure that the benefits of public participation in the delivery of government-funded projects such as inclusivity and transparency, government responsiveness to citizen needs as well as successful implementation of the projects and an increase in projects’ chances of sustainability are harnessed, there need to understand the contributing factors towards that. According to reports, Kenya lacked both a structure or policy for civic education and public involvement, which contributed to the low turnout at meetings held across the country and that has undoubtedly been a result of poor delivery of NG-CDF projects, a case in point, Dadaab Constituency. This study therefore focused on unearthing the dynamics of information flows on public participation in National Government Constituency Development Funded School Projects in Dadaab Garissa County, Kenya. The research objective was to establish the influence of public awareness on public participation in NG-CDF School Projects in Dadaab Garissa County, Kenya. The theory guiding the study was the Theory of Planned Behavior. A descriptive research design was adopted and the target response was NG-CDF education projects in Dadaab Constituency including NG-CDF committee members, wards representatives, staff from the education department in the county, project beneficiaries as well as the project managers (school heads) who included all the 45 heads of the public primary and secondary schools in the constituency and parent’s teacher association members. In total, 144 respondents were targeted. Semi-structured questionnaires were adopted to collect both qualitative and quantitative data which was analyzed through thematic as well as quantitative techniques. Atlas TI software was use to analyze the qualitative data while SPSS (V.26) was used to extract descriptive and inferential statistics. It was established that public awareness had a positive and significant influence on public participation in NG-CDF School Projects. This implies that an improvement in public awareness leads to a significant improvement in public participation in NGCDF education projects. The study recommends NGCDF board in Dadaab to implement targeted awareness campaigns to improve public participation and community development outcomes.
