Why We Did This Audit
On January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14169 directed a government-wide pause and review of all of U.S. foreign assistance. As of March 2025, USAID had terminated over $76.5 billion out of a total of $159 billion (almost 50 percent) in foreign assistance awards. Executive Order 14204 separately suspended all U.S. foreign assistance to South Africa. As a result, implementers began preparing to dispose of government-funded assets. In response to the award terminations, we initiated a series of audits examining asset disposition processes for eight USAID missions around the world. The objective of this audit was to assess USAID’s disposition process for high-value assets procured under terminated awards in Southern Africa. We reviewed all 51 programmatic awards with high value assets USAID Southern Africa (USAID/SA) managed that were terminated between January 20 and April 9, 2025. We selected a judgmental sample of 16 of these awards and visited seven implementation sites to verify the presence of assets and assess the completeness of inventory lists. We reviewed asset disposition activities as of May 1, 2025, because access to implementing partner staff, office space, and physical assets was limited after this time.
What We Found
USAID Southern Africa had not approved over half of implementer disposition plans for high-value assets and had limited controls in place to ensure inventory accuracy. In response to the extensive termination of foreign assistance programs, USAID/SA expedited the disposition of $28.7 million in assets implementers purchased for 51 terminated programmatic awards. As of May 1, 2025, 30 of 51 programmatic awards lacked approved disposition plans, leaving assets idle and at risk. Among the 16 selected awards we reviewed, implementers reported $15.1 million in purchased assets, which included 614 high-value assets, and mainly proposed to retain, donate, or sell the assets. The mission had approved implementers to dispose of only 94 assets. USAID/SA relied heavily on implementer-generated records and mission officials’ program knowledge and performed little verification of inventory lists. This limited oversight contributed to discrepancies including missing assets in inventory lists. As a result, high-value assets procured under USAID/SA terminated awards were at risk of misappropriation, loss, or fraud.
What We Recommend
We made two recommendations to USAID to approve remaining asset disposition plans for USAID/SA awards and implement controls to verify high-value assets implementers purchased.