10th U6+ Consortium of African Universities International Conference

Construction of road networks by the Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) in the North Rift Region is essential for improving regional integration, trade and socio-economic growth in support of Kenya's Vision 2030. However, such projects have been plagued by issues including cost overruns, delays and quality issues. This research seeks to investigate the association between monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices and performance of KeNHA road construction projects in the North Rift Region. This included four M&E practices: performance evaluation, field visits, budget management and stakeholder involvement. It also considered the moderating role of government policies on the relationship between M&E practices and project performance. The study was informed by the Theory of Change, complemented by Program Theory, Agency Theory and Stakeholder Theory. It used a correlation research design (quantitative approach) to examine the nature of relationships between variables. The quantitative approach was applied to develop the research design of descriptive and correlation design. Questionnaires were used to collect data and a sample of 129 respondents who are KeNHA staff involved in the project were selected. Data was analyzed using the SPSS version 29, using descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple linear regression models, which included the interaction terms to examine the moderating role of government policies. The findings revealed that monitoring and evaluation practices had significant positive relationships with project performance, while government policies also showed a significant moderating influence on the relationship between M&E practices and project performance (p = 0.000). The regression analysis showed that the unmoderated model explained 53.6% (R² = 0.536) of the variation in project performance. When government policies were introduced as a moderating variable, the explanatory power increased to 59.4% (R² = 0.594), confirming that government policies significantly strengthened the relationship between M&E practices and project performance. The research found that M&E is a crucial practice in improving project performance but is not effective in the North Rift Region because of the lack of an effective feedback mechanism, lack of enforcement and delays in policies. It suggests strengthening the corrective action processes, enforcement of site visits, budget management, participatory stakeholder engagement and simplifying government approvals to enhance project performance.