Success factors and criteria in the management of international development projects: Evidence from projects funded by the European Union in Ethiopia

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the results of a survey that aims to explore and identify the European Union (EU) Development Cooperation project success factors and criteria and explain the relationship between the critical success factors (CSFs) and project success as perceived by the project managers and team members of the organizations participated in the survey.

The research followed interpretive research philosophy, abductive approach, survey as a strategy, a cross-sectional time horizon and questionnaire as data collection instrument. It also employed exploratory design to identify CSFs and explanatory design to explain relationships between success factors and project success. Both primary and secondary data were used to gather data. Unstructured interviews were conducted with the project team members of EU delegation to Ethiopia, government organizations and NGOs while the secondary sources of data included extensive review of literature.

Using principal component analysis the study identified a specific set of four CSFs for projects funded by EU: intellectual capital, sound project case, key manpower competency and effective stakeholder engagement. Moreover, the descriptive statistics of the survey highlighted five critical success variables: clear policy of donors and recipient government, strong local ownership of project, effective consultation during planning, high motivation and interest, and compatible rules and procedures. The study ranked relevance, impact, effectiveness, sustainability, and efficiency according to their level of importance by the participants of the survey.

The research is temporally, spatially, and contextually delimited to EU funded projects from the period 2010 to 2014 that are completed and still ongoing. Moreover, the current study focusses only on aid projects funded by EU in Ethiopia which might limit its generalizability into ID projects in developing countries funded by bodies other than EU such as World bank, United Nations and its different bodies, African Union, Japanese government to mention some.

The current study has clearly identified intellectual capital which covers social capital as the most important success factor for projects funded by EU in Ethiopia. Accordingly, the study underscored the importance of securing continuous support from all stakeholders and holding effective consultations of stakeholders during planning, implementation and closing phases of EU funded projects.

The study identified new CSFs specific to projects funded by EU and the incompatibility in the perceived importance of project success criteria among different stakeholders implicating differences in the priority they set.