Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans

Editor’s Note: This is part three in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. 

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The Department of Government Efficiency has shuttered a small, USAID-adjacent federal agency called the African Development Foundation, over the outrage of Democrats who say it means poor Africans will suffer and public servants will lose their jobs.

But top officials used the agency to advance their own interests and live lives of luxury at the expense of those Africans, while forcing some staff to work without pay and abusing others so badly that they routinely cried, a Daily Wire investigation found.

That included helping Herbalife, a multi-level marketing scheme run by an agency board member, make inroads in Africa. John Agwunobi, who served as CEO of Herbalife, was an African Development Foundation board member until President Donald Trump fired the board in March.

Agency management locked the doors to prevent DOGE auditors from entering, and the Trump administration gained access only with the assistance of U.S. Marshals. The standoff made the agency the subject of fawning coverage from media outlets that said it was standing up for principles.

But its employees knew better.

“The hero of the story is actually the villain,” one former employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was so hard to see ADF being used as a beacon of hope and resistance against DOGE because I knew they were actually covering up horrible things…When I saw that ADF was being celebrated as a David vs. Goliath situation, I knew the doors were being kept locked for a reason.”

In 2020, the African agency partnered with Herbalife at Agwunobi’s behest. That was two months after Herbalife paid a $122 million settlement to the Department of Justice to settle criminal charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It also paid $200 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it was a pyramid scheme that exploited people into opening money-losing businesses.

The African Development Foundation made it seem like the partnership was with a nonprofit affiliated with Herbalife. But it was actually with the company itself, which was seeking to expand its reach in Africa, the agency’s former general counsel, Mateo Dunne, found, according to materials obtained by The Daily Wire. The grants involved paying five Africans $5,000 and providing them “product donations, and Herbalife Nutrition staff as global volunteers in their businesses,” partnership materials said.

“The marketing materials prepared by USADF and Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. reflect that the partnership was being used to drive corporate sales and marketing, not charitable objectives,” Dunne concluded. “USADF personnel described the partnership with Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. as designed to leverage USADF’s network and reputation to promote the Herbalife brand in Africa.”

That sort of violation of conflict of interest rules was common in the agency, Dunne said.

The agency’s chief executive from 2016 to 2021, C.D. Glin — a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps — had the agency pay $5,000 a year to an organization, Root Capital, of which he was a board member, employees said. Glin did not file conflict-of-interest reports and ethics pledges, which are required by law and designed to prevent such situations, for most of the years he worked there. He filed one in 2019, but omitted Root Capital from it.

Using poverty funds for luxury.

In January 2022, Travis Adkins, who had been serving as a Joe Biden appointee to USAID, took over as CEO of the African Development Foundation. He had a lien against him for unpaid federal taxes from 2015 until February 2021, according to public records. Landlords in New York and Washington, D.C., said in court filings that he owed them money.

Employees said both Glin and Adkins used agency spending to build their personal brands and glad-hand with celebrities and billionaires, while treating workers with the callous cruelty of which liberals accuse DOGE, employees said.

Glin had the agency pay for him to “travel to countries and network at things that had nothing to do with grassroots African economic development. He went to a Scandinavian country, a European country, African countries where there was no ADF program being considered. He was spending ADF money to get his next job,” an employee said.

Another employee said he’d have the agency pay to sponsor conferences in order to buy prominent speaking slots: “He’d pay $30,000 to speak at events.”

Glin had the agency pay $1,000 to theboardlist.com, which helps executives get prestigious board seats based on DEI hiring in exchange for that amount, and $7,500 for a Harvard executive class just before leaving the agency, workers said.

All of that seems to have paid off: Glin is now president of the PepsiCo Foundation, overseeing $70 million.

“He went to a Scandinavian country, a European country, African countries where there was no ADF program being considered. He was spending ADF money to get his next job.”

Adkins, for his part, brushed off government rules about travel costs and demanded $1,000-a-night hotels, summarily firing an assistant who raised concerns about his travel arrangements, the former assistant told The Daily Wire, speaking on condition of anonymity. He had a tailor fit him for three custom suits, and sent the bill to the agency, she alleged.

The executives seemed more concerned about making the agency look good — so congressional funding would continue flowing — than they were in actually doing good, employees said.

One grantee, called Vava Coffee, violated rules about how it spent grant money, but threatened to publicly disparage the agency as “colonizers” if the checks didn’t keep coming. Glin ordered disbursements to continue, employee Kate Ristroph said in an internal interview obtained by The Daily Wire. She said she eventually succeeded in terminating the grant.

The agency entered into a partnership with the National Basketball Players Association, where NBA players could choose how to spend money in Africa, and American taxpayers would match it. Some of the money was used to build a basketball court.

Toxic workplace.

The African Development Foundation had a staff of between 30 and 60, and a budget of $45 million. By law, it was permitted to give grants only to African groups, and in the amount of $250,000 or less.

Glin and Adkins frequently hired workers as contractors instead of government employees, sometimes directing African funding recipients to, in turn, pay D.C. bureaucrats to get around rules and hide their overhead costs.

There were also other advantages. Hiring workers as contractors meant they didn’t have to follow merit-based hiring practices, prove wrongdoing when firing people, or grant them union protections.

The agency appeared so intent on avoiding those protections that it would essentially use government credit cards to pay workers in “micropurchases,” a petty cash-like payment style that avoids scrutiny from Treasury Department officials. One contractor described having to restart her employment every five weeks, each time being paid by a different pass-through LLC, and sometimes working for long periods without pay.

Staff were horrifically mistreated by Glin and Adkins, who acted as if they were global celebrities instead of what amounted to managers of a few dozen people in an obscure organization, according to Daily Wire interviews and videos of an internal investigation.

Brandi James, the chief of staff, said in a videotaped internal interview: “Toxic would be people crying or things like that. Yeah, we had that, we had [Glin] yelling.”

A junior employee said she soiled herself after Glin made her afraid to leave her desk to use the bathroom. She said Glin would pound his fists, and people would walk into his office “with their hands shaking.”

Jeff Gilleo, a senior program manager, called Glin a “narcissistic bully” who “said mean things to almost everybody.”

Associate General Counsel Nina-Belle Mbayu said Glin screamed at her until she cried, and she sought therapy after having “physical reactions” anytime she thought of him. “People were just treated, in my opinion, as disposable,” she said.

Yael Nagar, a senior program analyst, said one employee “went on extended sick leave for a mental health program because they were so stressed at work,” and Glin’s takeaway was “we need to make sure no one…finds out about this.”

Employees said they tried to warn PepsiCo against hiring Glin, sending a letter “about the horrific culture and use of money” under Glin, but that he was hired anyway.

PepsiCo and Glin did not return a request for comment.

The African Development Foundation board also received the letter. But despite widespread agreement about Glin’s toxicity, it hired a close friend of Glin’s, Adkins, without Adkins even applying, Adkins said in a deposition. And many of the patterns continued.

On GlassDoor, the website where employees rate their workplaces, the themes were consistent. “USADF is a scary place to work… Maybe one day it will be a workplace that has admirable values and care for its staff. Presently though, it is rotten to the core,” one wrote in 2023.

“Toxic work environment led by narcissists,” another said that year. “After years of mismanagement, it cannot fulfill its potential.”

Brandi James, the agency’s chief of staff, said in an internal email that she tried to use government funds to pay GlassDoor to remove negative posts about the agency, but the site refused, leaving them visible to anyone who cared to look.

Though DOGE critics now claim that the African Development Foundation was essential and mourn for the jobs lost, when it was operational, no one showed an interest.

It “just seemed like there was never going to be any consequence for any of these things,” Nagar said.

READ PART ONE: Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend 

PART TWO: African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff

PART FOUR: ‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says