Assessing Community Involvement in Monitoring and Evaluation of Development Projects. The Case of the Kwahu West Municipal Assembly, Ghana

The study was on assessing community involvement in the monitoring and evaluation of Kwahu West Municipal Assembly projects in the eastern part of Ghana. The study aimed at unraveling the research question that whether decision-making and planning (DMP), community participation (CP), participatory local governance (PLG), monitoring and evaluation (M&E) have any effect on development projects (DP). To that end in view the researcher selected the Kwahu West Municipal Assembly projects and adopted quantitative method. The researchers collected data from a total of 52 respondents comprising of management and non-management staff and others stakeholders involved with Kwahu West Municipal Assembly project by administering a structured questionnaire. Data were then analyzed using SPSS software. Through analyzing correlation and regression, it was found that community participation (CP) has the highest correlation coefficient of 0.800 at p<0.01 (2-tailed) with development project, which were followed by participatory local governance (PLG) and monitoring (M) having a correlation coefficient of 0.680 at p <0.01(2-tailed) and 0.623 at p< 0.05 (2tailed) respectively. Lastly, there was a positive correlation between evaluation (E) and the dependent variable at 0.612 at p < 0.01 (2-tailed). The study come up with the suggestions that training in the form of workshops and briefing sessions should be organized for community members to build their capacity and enable them contribute meaningfully to the preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of community development project.