Trump Administration Blasted for Ending USAID’s $10 Million Toilet Project in Madagascar

Among the many wasteful foreign aid programs the Trump administration eliminated from the U.S. government’s generously funded global health strategy is a $10 million venture to provide an African nation with toilets after a smaller American-funded effort to help villagers in the country build toilets with local materials failed. The multi-million-dollar remedy, part of Obama’s mission to end extreme poverty, focused on sanitation by installing special toilets, known as MVP1, in the east African island of Madagascar. Over the weekend a mainstream newspaper published a lengthy hit piece chastising the Trump administration for eliminating the costly African toilet endeavor funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the bloated State Department offshoot that annually disbursed tens of billions of dollars with little oversight or accountability before the president dismantled it. Now, “only the rich can afford a toilet,” in Madagascar the recently published newspaper story declares as if that should be a concern for American taxpayers.

It marks the latest of extensive mainstream media coverage criticizing Trump’s razing of USAID—and questionable programs like the African toilets it bankrolled—while conveniently failing to report the pervasive fraud, waste and corruption that long gripped the foreign aid agency. Judicial Watch has exposed the crisis for years, reporting on a multitude of reckless USAID projects, including Kamala Harris’ failed multi-billion-dollar effort to curb “irregular migration” from three targeted countries known as the northern triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—and millions of dollars to promote leftwing billionaire George Soros’ radical globalist agenda in Latin America as well as a fruitless Clinton-backed port and power plant in Haiti. Judicial Watch has also taken legal action to uncover details about some of the agency’s problematic secret operations. In 2024 we sued USAID for records involving $27 million in Gaza grants that went to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.” The Biden administration claimed the recipients could not be disclosed because the agency’s workers could be put at risk by Israel. Earlier this year Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against USAID for failing to provide records about fraud and abuse tied to American aid money sent to Ukraine.

The multi-million-dollar African toilet project is just a shred of the broader problem, but worth noting because it provides the famously leftist establishment media with material to continue trashing the administration for redirecting its priorities involving global health strategies. Rather than dubious costly projects like toilets, the new focus is on preventing infectious disease outbreaks from reaching American shores, saving lives and preventing babies from being born with HIV/AIDS rather than sanitation in third-world countries. “Our global health programs have become inefficient and wasteful,” the State Department’s latest America First Global Health Strategy reveals. The 40-page document outlines a comprehensive vision that requires co-investment from recipient governments and a path to decreased dependency on assistance from Uncle Sam though other donor nations, such as Germany, Britain, Sweden and France, have followed the U.S. lead in drastically reducing foreign aid.

The recent newspaper article criticizes the Trump administration for failing to mention sanitation from its new global health strategy because it excludes projects like the African toilet venture. “Madagascar’s government, recently toppled in a military coupe, has a punishingly long list of problems to deal with and spends just a tiny fraction of its budget on sanitation,” the news story states, adding that “studies have shown widespread contamination of Madagascar’s drinking water, the result of feces buried in pits seeping into the ground.” The article does acknowledge that USAID paid $100,000 to clean up waste in Madagascar before cutting the MVP1 program, though part of the money was used to offer residents a free upgrade to an MVP2 toilet. The U.S. will continue helping impoverished African nations, the State Department assures, but the focus of the multi-billion-dollar funding will be on combatting malaria and maternal-child health as well as global health security. The administration will give Madagascar more than $134 million in assistance under a bilateral global health agreement announced last week. The deal also includes over a billion dollars for Ethiopia, $106 million for Botswana and $30 million for Sierra Leone.

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