Beneficiary Participation and Performance of Agricultural Projects in Rwanda: A Case of Post Harvest and Agri-Business Support Project

Effective projects depend mainly on proper project selection, project design, project implementation, beneficiary participation and monitoring and evaluation. The study was guided by three objectives, to evaluate the effect of beneficiary participation in decision making on performance of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support Project, to determine the effect of sharing project expectations with beneficiary on the performance of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support Project and to analyse the effect of feedback exchange between project team and beneficiary on performance ofPost-Harvest and Agribusiness Support Project. This study adopted correlational research design. The correlational design helps to establish the existence of relationship/ association/ interdependence between two or more aspects of a situation (Kumar, 2011). The researcher calculated the sample using Yamane Formula and came up with a sample of 399 respondents from beneficiaries and 17 employees and this gives a total 416 respondents. The target population of this study were 155, 518 beneficiaries and 17 Project staff. Sample size composed by 416 respondents. The findings revealed that Post-Harvest and Agri-Business Support Project accommodated the suggestions of its beneficiaries at the rate of 85.8 % during the project lifecycles.75 % of respondents agreed that the decision taken were reviewed. The findings also revealed that there is no sharing of appreciations between project team and beneficiaries, where the findings show that the level of appreciation is too low (39.5 %). Thereis no-sharing of areas of improvements between project team and beneficiaries and this is proved by the lower number of appreciation, where only 14.1 % appreciated this statement. Findings revealed that participation in decision making, sharing project expectations and ffeedback exchange between project team and beneficiary affected performance of Post-Harvest and Agri-Business Support Project, where (R=0.953) with variations in aspects of Participation in decision making, sharing project expectation and feedback exchange between project team and beneficiary contribute 90.5 % to project Performance. Post-Harvest and Agri-Business Support Projectshould involve all beneficiaries in the project review and sharing the feedback of the ongoing and ended projects activities, because poor sharing of feedback between project team and beneficiaries affect negatively the performance of Post-Harvest and Agri-Business Support Project. Furthermore, its staff should continue and improve on working closely with beneficiaries because it has a significant effect on performance of Post-Harvest and Agri-Business Support Project. The government of Rwanda should continue to launch many agricultural projects to support farmers in rural areas in order to increase their agricultural production.