Effect of Teamworking on Success of Government Agricultural Projects in Rwanda: A Case of Kirehe Watershed Management Project (KWAMP)

Evolution of team working and its concept started during the industrial revolution, where most organizations shifted from the hierarchical approach and used scientific management to design organizations and jobs. According to Kirehe Watershed Management Project financial and performance reports (2016), it used annually around twenty millions Rwandan francs to promote teamwork and increase the capacity of its staff. However, despite the huge amount of money used by Kirehe Watershed Management Project, its performance has not been very successful and one of the reasons given by projects consultants and evaluators is poor project teamwork whereby, some factors of effective teamwork like effective communication, competencies and attitudes have not been given attention during the project implementation process. Therefore the general objective of this study was to analyze the effect of team working on success of government agricultural projects in Rwanda. Its specific objectives were to determine the effect of team competencies on success of Kirehe Watershed Management Project, to assess the effect of team communication practices on success of Kirehe Watershed Management Project and to analyze the contribution of team behaviors and attitudes on success of Kirehe Watershed Management Project. This study used descriptive research design. The study population was 600 direct beneficiaries and 46 project staff under Kirehe Watershed Management Project which in total gives 647 people. The researcher collected data from 247 respondents which is the sample size calculated using Yamane formula. During collection of primary data, questionnaires were used as main instrument of data collection. To analyse data, the procedure was governed by the main headings of the researchers questionnaires, also, findings and interpretations were analysed interchangeably. To make this analysis efficient, the researcher examined all the answers in the same way. In this research data were analyzed quantitatively using inferential and descriptive statistics. The study showed that there is a strong positive correlation between team competencies and success of KWAMP project the Pearson correlation coefficient was.777, the correlation analysis demonstrated that there is strong positive relationship at 1 % level of significance with r =.712. The correlation analysis helped to demonstrate that there is a moderate positive relationship between these two variables at a significance level of 1 % with r =.661. The regression analysis showed that the coefficient for the variable team communication practices was.149 which means that if there is an increase of one unit in this variable, it will cause the project success to increase by 0.149 units if other variable remain constant. Based on the information drawn from findings the researcher concluded that the effect of team competencies on success of Kirehe Watershed Management Project is significant, the study also concluded that team behaviors& attitudes has a great effect on success of Kirehe Watershed Management Project.