Stakeholder Engagement Strategies and Performance of Renovation and Extension of Musanze Youth Empowerment Center Project in Rwanda

This study examined how stakeholder identification and analysis, stakeholder collaboration and partnership, and resource mobilization influence the performance of the Renovation and Extension of Musanze Youth Empowerment Center Project in Rwanda. Youth empowerment centers are widely used to build skills and jobs, yet little evidence shows which engagement strategies explain their performance, and most studies treat engagement as a single construct. The study used a descriptive, correlational, mixed-methods design grounded in Stakeholder Theory and Resource Dependence Theory. Questionnaires were returned by 142 of 148 sampled stakeholders, and project implementers were interviewed. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were based on the 43 sampled project implementers, who are best placed to judge project performance. The three strategies together explained 86.4% of the variance in performance (adjusted R² = 0.854, p < 0.001). Stakeholder identification and analysis (β = 0.529, p < 0.001) and collaboration and partnership (β = 0.399, p = 0.003) had significant positive effects, whereas resource mobilization did not (β = 0.050, p = 0.564). Schedule and budget were rated highly, but only about a quarter of respondents agreed that the project fostered youth self-reliance or income generation. The study concludes that how stakeholders are identified and brought together matters more than the volume of resources mobilized, and that timely, on-budget delivery does not by itself secure livelihood outcomes. It recommends mapping stakeholders at inception, institutionalizing coordination among institutional partners, extending participation to monitoring, and adding income support to youth centers. Keywords: stakeholder engagement, project performance, youth empowerment, resource mobilization, collaboration, Rwanda