A Survey of Factors Influencing Community Participation in Public Development Projects in Tanzania: A Case Study of Siha District Council

Community participation has been a concern in most projects especially in less developed countries. Cosmetic participation has been used purposely to justify projects and at the end of the day projects get stacked. The purpose of this study was to establish the factors that affect community participation in public development projects in Tanzania. A descriptive design was adopted for the study covering 100 a total population of 100 respondents comprising of staff, development committee and community members, and councilors. Data was collected through the use of self-administered questionnaires that were distributed to respondents at their work stations. Data analysis involved use of frequencies, percentages, means and Pearsons product moment correlation which was applied to establish the influence of independent variables on the dependent variable. According to the study findings, information access had a significant and positive correlation with participation at 0.322. There was also a positive correlation (0.357) between political will and community participation in public development projects. The results of Pearsons moment correlation test also revealed positive correlation (0.285) between civic education and community participation. Based on the findings, the study concluded that the level of community participation in development projects was high as a result of access to information, political will and civic education. Among the three factors political will had the greatest influence, followed by access to information and lastly civic education. The study recommends that the government and the other stakeholders should facilitate and increase awareness on community participation in public development projects in order to create a clear and common understanding of essences of their contribution and ultimate benefits.