The Impact of Market Assessment on The Sustainability of Humanitarian Projects in Yemen: INGOs Perspective

Abstract

Sustainability of humanitarian projects has increasingly become an important theme that all INGOs, donors, fundraisers, beneficiaries, and stakeholders are focusing on in the time being. However, some humanitarian projects in Yemen have been suffering from the lack of sustainability. This study aims to examine the impact of market assessment on the sustainability of humanitarian projects in Yemen from the perspective of international NGOs. Quantitative approach was employed, and questionnaires were used to collect data from nine INGOs in Yemen; namely OXFAM, Handicap, Care, ACF, NRC, DRC, Islamic Relief, Save Children and Acted. The sample comprises of 207 participants, out of which 168 (81.16%) responded. The results indicate that there is a significant strong positive correlation between market assessment and the sustainability of humanitarian projects in Yemen. In addition, the results show that market assessment explain 84.1% of the sustainability of humanitarian projects. Furthermore, market assessment has a significant impact on the sustainability of humanitarian projects. Necessarily, projects management should take market assessment as critical aspect along all the stages of projects cycles starting from need assessment to project designing, proposal development, planning, implementation and monitoring and finally in review and evaluation, the time of project closure, and lesson learned. If not, the sustainability of projects in Yemen will continue to be problematic and cause loose of satisfaction of beneficiaries and trust of donors. Similarly, all project staff should be aware of market developments around them, including the access to the market, concentration of the markets, availability and cost of required goods, accessibility by buyers and sellers to the market, and most importantly integration of several markets. Therefore, the design of the projects will be based on the practical points that will help to ensure the budget allocated and the best quality of response. Finally, the design of the projects should be built on lesson learned from previous projects in the same context and same experience in the thematic and geographic areas that have the full market assessment summaries.