Audit backs Trump’s complaints about fraud at U.S. African development grant program

The U.S. African Development Foundation pumps out tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money every year to projects in Africa — but the agency lacks basic anti-fraud controls to make sure the funding is getting to the right places, the comptroller general reported Monday.

ADF has come under fire from President Trump, who earlier this year tried to roll back most of the $46 million that Congress allocated for the current year, saying the agency was a prime example of waste and abuse.

The new report by the Government Accountability Office seems to back up those claims, suggesting a serious susceptibility to fraud.

GAO said ADF, which issued grants to groups to carry out projects in Africa, hasn’t had its own contracting officer since 2011, doesn’t have written policies on how to oversee its contractors and lacked the staff to “adequately oversee” them anyway.

Employees acknowledged the problems to investigators, saying the policies that did exist were outdated, insufficient, and sometimes tough for employees to even find.

“This is because the agency did not prioritize obtaining or dedicating the personnel to maintain policies and implement fraud risk management tasks,” the audit concluded.

The agency had one staff member in charge of audits, but that person departed in 2024. Posts for a training officer and a financial analyst had also been vacant for months or years as of late 2024, the audit said.

The last major overhaul of ADF’s fraud controls was in 2012.

“Without these positions, including a leader to guide key internal control and fraud risk management activities, USADF was at a greater risk of being unable to mitigate fraud risks,” investigators said.

ADF didn’t respond to an inquiry for this story but, in its official response to the audit, it accepted GAO’s findings and agreed to take corrective action — “if USADF continues operations.”

The agency has been the subject of a fierce legal battle, with former ADF head Ward Brehm suing to prevent his ouster and groups that had been counting on getting ADF money suing to keep the pipeline open.

A federal judge in June shot down Mr. Brehm’s challenge, but in July ruled in favor of the groups and ordered ADF to restore its grant process. That case is now tied to another case involving the wind-down of another similar agency, the Inter-American Foundation.

Sen. James E. Risch, Idaho Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who’d requested the GAO report last year, said it’s time to shut the whole thing down.

“USADF had no strategic approach and was not properly mitigating fraud, waste and abuse. It’s time for Congress to act on my bill to abolish this irredeemably broken agency,” he said.

Congress has already approved a partial recision of its money, and Mr. Trump has asked the program be eliminated from the 2026 budget.

ADF and IAF are independent agencies, operating with money sent directly by Congress and controlled by boards appointed by a president and confirmed by the Senate.

They act largely as pass-throughs, doling out the money. Critics accuse them of operating as slush funds.

In an emergency alert last year, an inspector general also raised alarms about the agency’s vulnerabilities to fraud and abuse.

It found instances where one recipient appeared to have sent grant money to a relative, and another where a school used the assistance money to buy a vehicle, which was then involved in a deadly crash. ADF officials at the time acknowledged the shortcomings and promised improvements.

GAO’s new report suggests the progress was lacking.

But Mr. Trump’s wind-down also came under fire by GAO, which said slashing the president’s move to cut the staff left just “one remaining official” who didn’t even have access to the agency’s grant management system.

That meant the agency couldn’t even properly close out the grants Mr. Trump was trying to cancel.

“Without enough staff and resources to follow procedures for orderly closeout, there is an increased risk of fraud, waste, or abuse of unused taxpayer funds or assets being used for unintended purposes,” the comptroller general said.

The Washington Times reached out to the White House Office of Management and Budget for this story.