Globally, over 700 million people, half in sub-Saharan Africa, lived in extreme poverty. Zambia is one of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that consistently received support towards poverty reduction. A key question was why livelihoods continued to deteriorate. The aim of this study therefore, was to evaluate donor funding contribution to sustainable livelihoods in vulnerable rural communities. The objectives of the study was to assess the influence of donor funding on livelihood and its outcomes, motives of the key players, adequacy of the delivery models and potential to change or improve the delivery system.
The study employed a mixed method approach and involved 337 respondents. The study tools included literature review, one-on-one interviews using close-ended questionnaire and focused group discussions using open-ended questionnaire. The qualitative and qualitative data was analyzed using Nvivo version 14 and SPSS version 26 / Microsoft excel / statistical calculations respectively.
The study established an inverse relationship between improved livelihoods and donor funding where donor funding increased against deteriorated livelihoods and increased poverty (Covx,y = 401.58; of 0.3558). This defeated the perception that donor funding improved livelihoods of vulnerable rural communities. The correlation between experienced livelihood change and donor motives was very weak but positive (7115.75 and 0.0745 respectively), thus accepted the null hypothesis that motives of donors influenced support to rural communities.
Overall, donors were strategic and always took measures to ensure longer-term control of the aid business. The T-test on the donor motives and decision factors was 2.69 at 4 degrees of freedom against the T value of 2.064, thus rejected the null hypothesis that donor motives influenced support to rural communities. The donor and community motives motivation had low divergence (p-value of 0.0000 at 5% significant level) and therefore rejected the null hypothesis that donors and vulnerable communities had similar motives towards donor funding.
The experienced change and the way the donor funds were delivered established significant correlation (t=0.042, p<0.05) on a 2 tailed test and confirmed the dependence of community experienced livelihood change on delivery channel of donor funding.
The quadratic regression analysis and T-Test (0.03) of the applied model and funding conditions indicated a positive relationship, thus upholding the null hypothesis of positive relationship between the variables.
The study established limited impact of donor funding on vulnerable rural communities because of insensitivity to local demands, rigidity, limited coordination, competitive tendencies and support fragmentation. Despite limited livelihood change, donor funding remained an important support towards rural livelihood improvement in developing countries like Zambia that highly depended on external resources. However, desperate need for external support had the potential to propel corruption, over-dependency and mismanagement of national resources (Moyo, 2009). In this regard, donors needed to strengthen their partnerships and relationships to ensure accountability.
The complexity and interconnectedness of the livelihood outcomes demanded holistic support and minimized divergence between donor and interests. There was a clear need for a paradigm shift to a more efficient aid delivery system that recognize local resources and other capacities with focus on sustainable development.
The study recommended for further research looking into comparative assessment of short-term and long-term donor funded projects (Mwebia & Yusuf, 2022); the sustainability of donor funded projects beyond donor financing and consequences of loose partnerships and relationships in effective delivery of donor funding.