Stakeholder Empowerment Strategies and Community Development Project Performance

Stakeholder empowerment strategies are globally recognized as a critical factor in enhancing the success of young people in their development. Despite this in Rwanda, some strategies are not well implemented due to inadequate findings. The general objective of this study was to assess the influence of Stakeholders Empowerment Strategies on Performance of Community Development Projects in Rubavu District, Rwanda, including, Capacity Building, Seed Capital and Social Network. The study used stakeholders’ theory, descriptive and correlation design. Questionnaires and interview guide were used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from 310 respondents. The respondents were selected randomly and purposively from a total population of 1610. The pilot study was conducted with a pre-test of 20 respondents from sample size, which is above the minimum recommended 10% of the sample size. The validity was confirmed to 0.78 while Reliability was measured with Cronbach’s alpha result of 0.84, indicating that the research instruments are accurate to be used. The study used descriptive statistics of percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviation, and the inferential statistics of Correlation and Regression were done at a significance level of 0.05 using SPSS. The findings for four hypotheses were tested at ?=.05 level of significance and the results were: There is no significant influence between Entrepreneurial Capacity Building (p=0.000<0.05), Seed Capital (p=0.000<0.05), and Social Network (p=0.000<0.05) and Performance of Community Development Projects were all rejected since (p=0.000<0.05. The study showed that the performance of community development projects is perceived as highly satisfactory, with participants reporting strong agreement on aspects such as timely implementation, adherence to budgets, and stakeholder satisfaction. The highest-rated item was the increase in beneficiaries due to improved service quality. It is recommended that community development project implementers should strengthen the engagement and communication with stakeholders, and organizations should prioritize long-term investments in entrepreneurial training programs, as well as establish partnerships with financial institutions. Future researchers should explore the long-term sustainability of community development projects, focusing on the enduring impact of entrepreneurial capacity-building initiatives, seed capital utilization, and social network development.