Institutional factors affecting performance of national agricultural advisory Services programme in Kabale Municipality, Uganda

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of institutional factors on the performance of the NAADS programme in Kabale Municipality. The study objectives were to; find out the effect of the structures, determine the effect of the policy guidelines, establish the effect of leadership, investigate the moderator effect of the cultural practices on the performance of the NAADS programme in Kabale Municipality. The study used a case study as main design and adopted a cross-sectional design. The study population was 186, the sample size was 163 and data were collected from a sample of 132 respondents thus the response rate was 81%. The data collection instruments used were questionnaire, interview guides, observation checklist, and documentary review guide. The data were analyzed using frequency distributions, correlation and regression analysis. The study found that structures, policy guidelines and leadership significantly affect the performance of NAADS program and cultural practices have a moderating effect on its performance and of the four, policy guidelines have great magnitude. Since institutional factors affect the performance of NAADS performance, institutions at all levels are very key for NAADS programme to succeed. Therefore the study concluded that; all NAADS structures should be in place for it to perform well in municipalities of Uganda, there will be improvement in the performance of NAADS programme if policy guidelines are streamlined, there will be an improvement in the performance of NAADS programme if leadership is streamlined and cultural practices moderate institutional factors and at the same time affect the performance of NAADS directly. The study recommended for NAADS national secretariat to introduce lacking functional NAADS structures at Municipal levels, the government of Uganda should revisit the NAADS Act 2003 and NAADS regulations to give the municipal authorities autonomy to manage financial and accountability of NAADS funds, procurement and audit like any other government programmes, Farmer forum leadership should be extended to municipal levels and take lead in creating awareness, the management of NAADS the programme should have a deliberate effort to include the poorest of the poor especially women in the programme and lastly, the study recommends for other areas of research in other factors affecting the performance of NAADS in Municipalities of Uganda.