Summary report on audit of AID management in the Sahel

Overall, A.I.D. has made good progress in managing the Program. The Agency has increased its use of project evaluations, improved systems to track project implementation, established controls to verify host country accounting for A.I.D. funds, assessed management capacities in order to better allocate funds, and enhanced staff efficiency through training and the use of computers. Further improvements are called for in three areas. (1) A.I.D. must improve its measurement of project progress and expand its reviews of internal controls, including conducting more comprehensive vulnerability assessments. (2) A.I.D. also needs to improve its financial management of the Sahel Program in regard to assessing host country contracting capacity, providing for audits in project design, and controlling voucher approval and payment procedures. (3) Finally, although staff efficiency has increased, A.I.D. needs to make greater efforts to balance work load with staff and budget resources. The Africa Bureau generally agreed with the audit, but felt that staff-workload assessments should be developed Agency-wide rather than by a single Bureau, a judgment with which the auditors concurred. (Author abstract, modified)