USAID Bureau for Africa’s Approach to Strategic Workforce Management Reflected Agency-Wide Challenges

Why We Did This Evaluation

• In July 2021, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations requested that USAID OIG evaluate key aspects of USAID Bureau for Africa’s strategic workforce management practices by examining how the bureau manages at least one mission in Africa.
• This evaluation builds upon the efforts of OIG’s May 2022 Agency-wide audit on strategic workforce planning. That audit identified challenges that impaired USAID’s ability to establish a comprehensive human capital approach, including insufficient guidance on conducting strategic workforce planning and assessing workforce needs.
• Our objectives were to evaluate USAID Bureau for Africa’s approach for (1) assessing current and emerging staffing needs at the bureau level from fiscal year 2015-2021 and (2) supporting mission-based staffing needs assessments and allocations from fiscal year 2015-2021, using USAID/Rwanda and USAID/Sudan as illustrative missions.

What We Found

• USAID Bureau for Africa used internal discussions and prior experience to gauge staffing needs when given the opportunity to expand its footprint. Without Agency guidance or tools to conduct a comprehensive staff assessment, Bureau for Africa officials found it difficult to determine whether the bureau had an adequate staffing composition to deliver on its mission.  
• The Bureau for Africa piloted USAID/Sudan’s staff assessment and facilitated aspects of Agency-wide staff allocation processes. Based on Agency policy, information that underpins these allocation processes was provided by missions but not vetted by the Bureau for Africa, which could put the bureau at risk of using irrelevant and unreliable information.

Why It Matters

• The bureau- and mission-level observations discussed in this evaluation are symptoms of systemic, Agency-wide workforce planning challenges that USAID must address to fulfill its mission and respond to new priorities.
• While we do not make new recommendations from this evaluation, we offer this information for the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management’s consideration as they finalize strategic workforce planning guidance and address recommendations from OIG’s May 2022 strategic workforce planning audit.