ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a study of Kenya's attempts to manage a project that was intended to result in a commercially produced home-grown car, the Nyayo Pioneer. It examines how the national institutions set about defining and interpreting project mission, aims and objectives, and how they worked towards attaining them. The chapter also examines instances of lessons transferred from other projects and sectors, the quality of information, documentation and records used, and how these affected decision-making. National Car Project (NCP) illustrates weaknesses in goal specificity and points to excessive discretion accorded to project members, leading to poor project management. By the conclusion of the pre-commercial phase of the project in 1990, the Kenya Industrial Property Office had been established. A terrain study by NCP should have sought to explore ways in which the local components sector could be strengthened and integrated with the assembly sector. NCP suffered from a serious lack of information gathering and processing back-up.
