Why We Did This Audit
On January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14169 directed a government-wide pause and review of all U.S. foreign assistance. As of March 2025, USAID has terminated over $76.5 billion out of a total of $159 billion—almost 50 percent—in foreign assistance awards. 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 determine the status of the disposition of USAID-funded physical assets procured under selected terminated awards in Egypt.
USAID defined four priority asset categories for expedited disposition: critical security risk, high-value, reputationally sensitive, and program commodities. We identified 44 programmatic awards the USAID Mission for Egypt (USAID/Egypt) managed that were terminated between January 20, 2025, and March 12, 2025. Of these awards, the mission reported that 11 awards had priority assets, such as vehicles and lab equipment, valued at $13.3 million.
What We Found
USAID/Egypt approved disposition plans and implementers generally donated assets, but certain assets could not be used as intended. Mission personnel said they approved disposition plans that implementers had submitted for the 11 awards we selected to review. We inspected 1,900 assets, valued at over $3 million, in the disposition plans for six of the awards and found that they matched associated inventory lists. These assets included IT equipment, lab equipment, and vehicles. We found that beneficiaries could not use some assets, valued at approximately $2 million, as intended because the training needed to use the assets was canceled when USAID terminated two of the awards. Because of USAID’s operating status and the subsequent transfer of certain foreign assistance functions to the Department of State, USAID/Egypt was unable to identify factors necessary to ensure assets would be used as intended before the awards were terminated.
What We Recommend
As the administration considers the future of foreign assistance, particularly efforts to dispose of physical assets under awards USAID formerly managed, we suggest that decision makers identify and monitor factors that affect the use of disposed assets as terminated award closeouts are completed to ensure that assets are used as intended.