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An Assessment of the Impact of Constituency Development Fund on Rural Development in Education and Health Sectors in Rufunsa Constituency, Zambia

This study envisioned to empirically assess the impact of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) on rural development with specific reference to education and health services in Rufunsa Constituency, east of Lusaka, Zambia. The objectives of the study were: to assess central government’s consistency in disbursing CDF fund to Rufunsa Constituency; to assess the impact of CDF in the provision of health and education facilities in Rufunsa constituency; and to assess the level of community participation in CDF funded projects in the health and education sectors in Rufunsa Constituency. The study adopted a descriptive analytical research design incorporating quantitative and qualitative methodological paradigms with the questionnaires and semistructured interviews as main data collection tools. The data analysis was performed through Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) for quantitative and content analysis for qualitative data. The sample size of the study was 109 respondents residing in Rufunsa Constituency, who comprised three (3) respondents (community members) from each of the ten (10) health facilities and ten (10) schools of the three (3) wards as beneficiaries; ten (10) health facility administrators; ten (10) school administrators, ten (10) health staff and ten (10) teaching staff. From the civic side, there were one (1) Member of Parliament (MP), three (3) ward councillors and five (5) CDF committee members. The study revealed that Government has not been consistent in the disbursement of funds as most of the school and health facilities under study had not received CDF funding in the past five years. Factually, for the period under review, the constituency as a whole received only twice (total of K2, 150,000.00) out of five times (K7,000,000.00) from 2016 to 2020 thereby robbing the constituency of over K4,850,000 deserved development fund. Besides, local communities and stakeholders were generally not involved in project identification, preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation processes in the health and education sectors as they were not knowledgeable and unware of CDF channels, sources, quantity and frequency of disbursement. Ultimately, the study findings demonstrated that CDF in Rufunsa has not played a significant role in health and education services delivery as poverty levels, illiteracy, mortality rates, inequalities and underdevelopment levels were still on the high side. Medical equipment, ambulance services, mortuary facilities, health centres, classrooms, computers, reading materials, health and teaching staff were acutely in short supply. On the other hand, the study found out that the factors accounting for the low level of community participation in CDF projects included lack of awareness and knowledge of CDF availability, lack of awareness about the right and opportunities for participation, inadequate information dissemination, poverty and poor community attitudes towards development participation and projects. The study concluded that rural development programmes are fundamental tools in improving the lives of people in the rural settings, hence the need for CDF programmes to be prioritised on the national agenda and be properly synchronised in governmental policies in order to mitigate glaring rural underdevelopment. The success of CDF as a rural poverty alleviation strategy can only be achieved with a decisive consideration of numerous factors, which include but not limited to; government consistency in the disbursement of funds and beneficiary participation in the sectors in question. Therefore, the study recommended that more civic education is needed to local communities to enable them make informed decisions and be actively involved in the entire process of the community projects. Furthermore, there is need for government’s consistency in funding constituencies, the amount of CDF allocated to each constituency should be increased to adequately improve the health care and education service delivery by taking into account factors such as size of the constituency (geographical / demographic); levels of poverty; and the levels of development required in such constituencies.