Influence of Tokenism in Sustainability of Rural Community Water Projects in Kenya

Abstract

In Africa today, a lot of water is needed to achieve sustainable development in rural communities. To a great extent, community water projects have failed to offer the highly needed solutions. Water scarcity experiences in many countries had shown that community water projects did not yield enough water, and those still in operation were functioning with many inherent problems. Pervasive poverty is still experienced in many Kenyan communities today. This has affected the socio-economic development wellbeing of rural communities. The Arnstein's Ladder Theory of Citizen Participation was adopted to guide the study and descriptive research design was used as a road map. The study investigated on the Influence of Tokenism in Sustainability of Water Projects, in empowering communities to achieve sustainable development. The specific research objective of the study was to evaluate the influence of tokenism in sustainability of community water projects.  The study sample was selected by systematic sampling. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data and descriptive and inferential statistical measures were used to analyse the data. In the study, Tokenism and Sustainability of Community Water Projects was significant at 0.01 level, correlated at level of 0.000. This confirmed that the regression F-test in the two variables (R²=0.251) with F = 0.004 and 46 degrees of freedom the test was significant. The p-value of 0.004 further confirmed the test was significant, meaning that Tokenism affected sustainability of community water projects. The study revealed that households did not participate fully in the initiation and implementation of water projects to solve the inherent water problems. The study found out water scarcity had not been eradicated or mitigated to manageable levels in the study area.