Why We Did This Evaluation
Ethiopia is one of the most food-insecure countries in the world. Since 2020, this food insecurity has been exacerbated by armed conflict, severe drought, and economic shocks including COVID-19. Between fiscal years (FY) 2021 and 2023, USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) obligated more than $3.3 billion in humanitarian assistance for Ethiopia.
On May 3, 2023, USAID paused its food assistance in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region after finding that food aid intended for Ethiopians suffering under famine-like conditions was being diverted and sold on the local market. One month later, USAID expanded the pause to the entire country after finding widespread food aid diversion throughout Ethiopia.
We initiated this evaluation to assess USAID’s oversight of emergency food assistance awards in Ethiopia prior to the discovery of widespread diversion. Our objectives were to evaluate the effectiveness of BHA’s (1) award administration, (2) monitoring, and (3) management of incident reporting.
What We Found
BHA Lacked Controls to Allocate the Appropriate Number of Agreement Officer Representatives for Ethiopia and to Maintain Award Records in the Agency’s Official System. BHA did not have a method to determine the number of agreement officer representatives (AORs) necessary for its emergency food assistance awards in Ethiopia—a gap that resulted in too few AORs to effectively manage the awards. BHA also lacked controls to ensure that required award administration activities were properly recorded in USAID’s official electronic repository of all award documentation, increasing the risk of award mismanagement.
BHA Failed to Effectively Monitor Emergency Food Assistance in Ethiopia. BHA neither developed a country monitoring plan nor completed required formal assessments of the need for a third-party monitoring program. Instead, BHA relied on virtual meetings and unverified implementer reporting to monitor emergency food assistance. Additionally, limited capacity and staffing strained BHA’s ability to monitor awards effectively, despite significant increases in humanitarian assistance funding in the country. BHA likely would have detected the widespread food diversion earlier if it had resourced and implemented a more robust monitoring approach.
BHA Did Not Enforce Timely Reporting, Had Unclear Reporting Requirements, and Did Not Fully Document or Respond to Implementer Incident Reports. USAID does not define timeliness in its incident reporting requirements, which makes it more difficult for BHA to enforce its own requirements. In addition, BHA did not consistently record incident-related documentation in the three required information systems. Further, BHA did not consistently respond to incident reports it received related to emergency food assistance.
What We Recommend
We made 11 recommendations to improve BHA’s award administration, monitoring, and incident reporting policies and procedures. USAID agreed with 10 recommendations and disagreed with one.