Ontological Inquiry into the Nature of Project Success in African Contexts: Developing an Ubuntu-Informed Success Framework

Dominant project success frameworks are ontologically rooted in Western individualist assumptions that may poorly represent African relational worldviews, limiting their validity in sub-Saharan African project contexts. This study conducts an ontological inquiry into the nature of project success as understood in African contexts and develops an Ubuntu-informed success framework. An interpretivist phenomenological design will engage 50 project practitioners and community stakeholders from five Nigerian geopolitical zones through in-depth phenomenological interviews exploring what project success means to them, how it is experienced, and what values underlie their success assessments. Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) will generate rich ontological descriptions. Ubuntu philosophy, centered on communal well-being and relational values, will serve as the theoretical sensitizing framework. The resulting framework will incorporate relational, communal, and intergenerational success dimensions absent from Western PM success models. This study constitutes a decolonial original contribution to project management ontology and success theory, with direct implications for project evaluation practice across sub-Saharan Africa. Keywords: project success, Ubuntu, African contexts, ontology, phenomenological research