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The Nairobian

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Implement government projects better to minimise wastage of funds

Opinion

By Patrick Dan Mukhongo | Jan 31, 2025

**Some of the stalled projects at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology.** [Isaiah Gwengi].

Statistics abound from various agencies on the state of Kenya’s project implementation status in the past five years, with many of the projects facing myriad challenges. According to the Project Management Institute, projects may be classified as successful if they meet all the criteria defined at the projects’ initiation. Projects are challenged when they meet only part of the set criteria while failed projects struggle to meet any of the set criteria, and it is the latter projects that culminate into white elephants which denotes abandoned projects.

From the outset, it is important to note that projects are initiated after a well thought out needs assessment and go through a justification process in order to determine their feasibility, viability and practicability. However, along the projects’ lifecycle phases, many factors, both internal to government and from the external environment, come into play to torpedo the prior planning that usually goes into these projects.

Kenya has had a mixed bag of results in terms of project completion rates. In the first half of 2024, reports by the Auditor General indicated that stalled projects, which were spread across 10 counties and worth Sh12.03 billion had stalled, others had fallen behind schedule, and yet many other projects had been abandoned altogether. Some other projects were completed but left idle, thereby not affording the public value for their taxes.

In the last quarter of 2024, the National Assembly through the Committee on Trade, Industry and Cooperatives accused the National Treasury of failing to disburse a mind-boggling Sh218.5 billion for various projects that were earmarked for spurring economic growth in the financial year ending June 2024.

The aforementioned are snippets of the big ticket government projects that have faced challenges and have been brought to the fore for their sub-par implementation, and which begs the question, what usually goes wrong?

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The Public Finance Management Regulations of 2022 indicate that national and county governments will implement a standardised project cycle management methodology and offer a legislative framework for the efficient and successful management of public investments. It includes project identification and planning, pre-feasibility and feasibility, budgeting, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting, closure, sustainability, and impact assessment to guarantee that public resources are used as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The stated regulations are a synopsis of what ought to be done to forestall the many cases of poor implementation of government projects. However, it seems that in some cases, the central government as well as most county governments have fallen short in adhering to the envisaged tenets of Public Finance Management Regulations of 2022.

The national government has faced project implementation challenges despite having the Kenya Electronic Project Monitoring Information System, and also the electronic national integrated monitoring and evaluation system whose roles are to track the implementation and performance of government projects and programmes, and real time reporting about projects respectively.

Makueni County has invested heavily in a project monitoring and tracking system which allows a controlling purview of the progress of projects. These are laudable initiatives by national and some county governments and deserve commendation. However, just like the Finance Management Regulations of 2022 that could solve the project implementation challenges being experienced, these systems would amount to naught if the human capital element in project management continues to be handled in a fortuitous manner.

There ought to be deliberate efforts to engage individuals who understand the nitty-gritty aspects of project management to be the superintendents in projects and not just onboarding all and sundry, which is akin to having square pegs in round holes. That has become a harbinger of sub-par implementation and performance of some government projects.