Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to about 750 million people spread over 48 states. The World Bank expects this figure to rise further to top one billion by 2020. The worldwide process of structural change, which began in the 1990s, has triggered radical transformation in Africa as elsewhere. In almost all states in the region, multi-party presidential or parliamentary elections have since been held. Some states have achieved impressive economic growth.

But this progress still contrasts with serious problems. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world in which poverty has worsened over the last twenty years. One quarter of the population suffers as a result of crises of state or armed conflicts. Sixty per cent of all people living with HIV in the world today live in sub-Saharan Africa. Indebtedness, the flight of capital, and inequitable world trade regulations act as obstacles to the development of societies and economies.

Opportunities for Africa

The new political dynamism that marks many African states today offers huge development opportunities for the region. The growing international consensus about development objectives and national poverty reduction strategies is also encouraging.

Sub-Saharan Africa benefits more than any other region in the world from the HIPC and MDRI debt relief initiatives. By mid-2006, 25 countries in the region had received debt relief totalling some 50 billion US dollars (based on value as at the end of 2005). The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, initiated in the middle of 2001 by the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, also benefits Africa to a significant degree.

International agreements

The international community has undertaken to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Whether or not they manage to do so will depend crucially on progress made in Africa. In the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the African states and their international partners agreed in 2005 to better harmonise and coordinate their joint efforts in the years to come.

The profile of German development cooperation in sub-Saharan Africa

The German government takes international agreements and the commitments entered into extremely seriously. This is why, in consultation with its African partners and other donors, the Federal Republic of Germany is increasingly focussing on certain priority areas in its development cooperation.

This profile-building results in stronger specialisation in certain fields of cooperation and a better international division of labour. It also helps to fine-tune cooperation concepts and strategies.

The aim is to draw up an internationally valid profile for German development cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa. This can make measures more effective and improve cooperation with partner countries and other donors. Profile-building always operates within the framework of global development policy concepts – it does not entail any shift in the priorities of German development policy.

Thus, in 2004 the BMZ began to concentrate its development policy programmes on certain fields of activities. Three profile areas have now been identified for German development cooperation with sub-Saharan African states:

• Good governance
• Sustainable economic development
• Water

Cooperation between Germany and regional organisations within Africa

With the founding of the African Union (AU) in July 2002, the states of Africa recognised their own responsibility for democracy, human rights, and all-round good governance.

The growing cooperation among African states offers excellent opportunities to avoid regional conflicts in future, and to resolve those that arise nevertheless. It thus marks a major contribution to ensuring peace and security. At the same time it provides a foundation for economic development in the region. The economic and political options open to individual nation states are limited – more intensive regional cooperation pushes back these limits significantly. African economies can become competitive at international level, and attract foreign investors. In future they ought to be able to play an active part in shaping the globalisation process.

The German government has supported this important reform initiative from the outset. Along with the other G8 nations, it adopted the G8's Africa Action Plan at the summit meeting held in Kananaskis in 2002. In 2003 in Evian, the first report on the implementation of the plan was presented, followed by the second at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 and the third at the Heiligendamm summit in 2007. At the summit meetings, other far-reaching decisions were also taken regarding increasing official development assistance (ODA) and debt relief for Africa states.

For German development policy, cooperation with African regional organisations is becoming increasingly important. Significant development potential can only be mobilised by cooperating across national boundaries. This is why Germany regularly complements its bilateral cooperation with African states with elements of cross-border regional cooperation. This applies in particular to political and economic integration, securing peace, and the management of natural resources.

New partnership in Africa

The states of Africa have together set up a number of regional organisations. As far back as 1963, when not all states had even gained independence, the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) was set up.

In the decades that followed, regional bodies were established in West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. While these organisations pursued primarily economic objectives, in some instances they also sought closer political cooperation.

Regional integration was given a new dynamism by the disbanding of the OAU and the founding of the African Union (AU) in 2002. Inside and outside Africa, great hopes have been vested in the AU and its New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

African states realise that peace and security, good governance, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights are the foundations on which to build economic growth, sustainable development and effective poverty reduction.

The regional organisations, which are to push forward with political and economic integration, today form a link between pan-African processes (NEPAD, AU) and the national level. This gives them an increasingly important part to play in implementing the new African political agenda. The following are the main regional organisations in sub-Saharan Africa:

• East African Community (EAC)

• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

• Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)

• Southern African Development Community (SADC)