Did USAID Allot US$17 Million Project For Liberia that Elon Musk's DOGE Canceled?
BJ
Bettie K. Johnson-Mbayo
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Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), announced Monday, February 10, that a $17 million project to provide tax policy advice to Liberia has been canceled.
Musk took to his social media platform X, announcing the action by DOGE with a question, “Why would anyone think that this is a good use of YOUR tax money?”
Musk, a staunch supporter of the Donald Trump presidency, thinks that USAID should be shut down as DOGE takes over to cut waste in the US government.
Following the 1980 coup, ties between the United States and Liberia deteriorated until the civil conflicts ended. Ties strengthened significantly under President Sirleaf's term (2006-2018), with an increase in US funding. In 2013, the United States and Liberia established a partnership dialogue.
Since the conclusion of Liberia's civil conflicts, the United States has donated approximately $2 billion in aid coordinated by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to promote stabilization, security-sector reform, governance, and development.
Liberia has received extra monies through global and regional initiatives, help from other US agencies, and emergency financing (e.g., Ebola and COVID-19 assistance). Liberia is a focal nation for the President's Malaria Initiative and Feed the Future, and it works with the Michigan National Guard through the State Partnership Program.
USAID-administered assistance for Liberia totaled $112.3 million in FY2018 and $96.5 million in FY2019, although the website is currently unavailable.
Recent U.S. aid largely has focused on health system strengthening and support for public service delivery, civil society capacity building, agriculture sector development, and justice sector improvements.
Most U.S. development assistance is implemented by nongovernmental organizations, but the United States has a direct government-to-government financing agreement with Liberia’s Ministry of Health that supports health service delivery.
The USAID website shows that Liberia agreed with USAID to support a five-year pilot program—the Liberia Domestic Resource Mobilization (LDRM) initiative—with the aim to increase resources to help bolster the GOL’s own-source revenue generation efforts.
Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), the implementer of the project, also published that the government of Liberia’s ability to collect taxes from its citizens is critical to the country’s long-term development goals.
The USAID factsheet showed that the project is to support the MFDP in developing the capacity to formulate sound, predictable, and fair revenue policies. It also supports the Liberia Revenue Authority to enhance its ability to effectively, efficiently, and transparently implement those policies and carry out its revenue collection mandate.
The project is currently closed and was US $15,796,560.00, which was implemented from 2016 to 2021.
We found another project USAID-Liberia Economic Policy Dialogue that seeks to tackle critical economic policy challenges by strengthening policy-making capacity within the Government of Liberia and facilitating the design and implementation of specific reforms to reduce the cost of doing business and promote private sector-led, broad-based economic growth and development.
The US$16.29 million is a 4-year project implemented by Nathan Associates, a consulting firm and a wholly owned subsidiary of Cadmus Group.
In the annual report, we established that the project ran from October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2023, with a no-cost extension to the activity through January 15, 2024.
The project with 99% of the funds being disbursed showed that the project is at its closure.
Then another project, Liberia—Local Empowerment for Accountability and Decentralization (LEAD), was deleted from the DAI website, but the wayback machine recovered the deleted data.
LEAD works to improve the capacities of select Government of Liberia ministries, agencies, and commissions to formulate and administer sound tax policies, improve budget transparency, deepen decentralization, and improve service delivery at the sub-national level. Screenshot of the project
We checked the US Embassy website for further information; the speech given by the Charges d’ Affaires Catherine Rodriguez was not seen.
An article by the Daily Observer on the event was also deleted. But the internet archive restored her speech, including the article when she attended the national dialogue in Monrovia.
The Ministry of Finance also published several articles on the project; see here, here, and here.
Conclusion: Musk's assertion that a US$17 million tax initiative by USAID had been terminated is true. The project was called USAID-LEAD Activity.
