ASSESSING THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN RURAL ROAD DEVELOPMENT PROJECT: THE CASE OF GUMMER WOREDA GURAGE ZONE, CENTRAL ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Community participation plays an irreplaceable role in the effectiveness of any development project. This means that no development work at any level can be successful without community participation. Based on that, the main objective of this study is: to examine the role of community participation in road development project in the case of Gummer woreda Gurage zone. The study used a mixed research approach and method of data collection were written questionnaires, interview and document analysis. In order to collect the required data, the study used multi stage sampling technique through this at first stage clustering sampling technique second stage simple random sampling technique and at third stage stratify sample sampling technique were employed. Subsequently, the data has been collected from these 151 samples and from 9 key informants and analyzed by using data analysis methods of descriptive statistics for qualitative research and graph, percentage and cross tabulation data analysis method for quantitative research. Findings show themajority of the respondent agreed that participation of the community in the area of road development is very high and their contribution is manifested in different ways, sharing money, by sacrificing their labor and giving their time to coordinate and managed the project. On the other hand, the result of the study confirm that there are structural, economic and institutional problems that prevent community participation from being effective at the required level, and recommended that to reduce the high cost of bringing select material from distant places, the district government should work with the neighboring districts and zones to produce gravel.