A government watchdog wants to know what the U.S. Agency for International Development plans to do with a $416 million effort to promote gender equality in Afghanistan, especially in light of the agency’s prior mismanagement of many similar programs.
John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, pressed USAID for details about the plans in a letter made public Thursday to acting USAID head Alfonso Lenhardt. Lenhardt has served as the interim administrator of the agency since Rajiv Shah stepped down in February.
“I am concerned that some very basic programmatic issues remain unresolved and that the Afghan women engaged in the program may be left without any tangible benefit upon completion,” Sopko said.
Sopko said a recent meeting with USAID officials on the status of the project left him and his staff with “troubling” questions about how taxpayer money would be spent on the effort.
Agency officials were unable to compile a list of all the Afghan women programs under USAID’s control, nor could they say how much those projects cost, SIGAR reported in December.
Despite a pledge to pour $216 million into the new program, the agency has failed to produce data supporting claims that any of its efforts thus far have improved the lives of Afghan women.
Another $200 million, provided by unidentified foreign donors, brought the total funding for the initiative to $416 million.
USAID awarded five-year contracts to Chemonics International, Development Alternatives Inc. and Tetra Tech. While the agency was able to turn over supporting documents for its work with Tetra Tech, it couldn’t provide records of its contract with the other two firms because those documents were still “in draft.”
Tetra has received 157 contracts collectively valued at nearly $9.2 million thus far in 2015, including five from the development agency for a total of nearly $4 million, according to USASpending.gov.
Chemonics has received 45 contracts to date this year totaling $128 million. Development Alternatives, Inc. has been awarded 19 contracts so far in 2015, totaling $81 million.
The development agency has no written agreement between its contractors and the Afghan government to move forward with the effort.
Sopko asked how the development agency plans to measure the performance of its programs beyond simply counting the number of women trained in leadership courses.
He noted that his concerns were similar to those of Afghan First Lady Rula Ghani, who addressed the gender equality project during a speech in November.
“The ambitious USAID five-year program proposes to train young, educated women in the fields of advocacy, leadership, public administration, and economy. It has announced a large budget for that purpose. The immediate effect in Kabul has been a flurry of NGOs, newly created or reconfigured with the view of attracting some of the windfalls of that budget,” Ghani said.
“I do hope that we are not going to fall again into the game of contracting and sub-contracting and the routine of workshops and training sessions generating a lot of certificates on paper and little else,” she said.
