Structure and Organisation
The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has some 600 employees. About 80 per cent of them are based at the Ministry's Bonn office, while the others work at the Berlin office. A certain proportion of employees are always to be found outside the Ministry, where they take on development policy assignments worldwide for a period of a few years. Within the scope of this "rotation" of staff between Germany and other countries, about ten per cent of BMZ employees work in German missions abroad, for international organisations or in specific development projects.
The BMZ differs from other government bodies in that it does not have a typical institutional sub-structure. Projects are executed by what are known as implementing organisations, commissioned by the Ministry. These organisations then work together with executing agencies in the partner country concerned, which are selected by the government in that country.
The implementing organisations of official German development assistance include the Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED – German Development Service), the Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG – German Investment and Development Company), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ – German Technical Cooperation, KfW Entwicklungsbank (KfW development bank), Capacity Building International, Germany (InWEnt) and the Centrum für internationale Migration und Entwicklung (CIM – International Centre for Migration and Development).
Bonn Office
Directorate-General 1 (made up of 14 divisions) is primarily responsible for general administrative tasks, and for cooperation with civil society forces, including NGOs and political foundations. The division for evaluation and auditing reports directly to the Director-General. This Directorate-General is also responsible for the administration of the Bonn and Berlin offices.
Directorate-General 2 (made up of 16 divisions) is responsible for development cooperation with countries and regions in Asia, Latin America and Europe and for peacebuilding, democratisation and the United Nations. It is responsible for basic policy work with the partner countries, political dialogue and determining the shape of bilateral cooperation. It coordinates and integrates all development policy measures and is responsible for the management and monitoring of all Financial and Technical Cooperation projects and programmes with individual countries.
Directorate-General 3 (made up of 18 divisions) is responsible for cooperation with international organisations and for donor coordination. It elaborates the fundamental principles and strategies for providing support in the major fields of development policy work (economic and financial systems, the environment and sustainable management of natural resources, poverty reduction and social development). It is also involved in the formulation of a holistic North-South policy and global structural policy. Responsibility for Africa and the Middle East has also been transferred to this Directorate-General, the aim being to ensure that cooperation with the individual countries in these regions is coordinated even more closely with the efforts of international institutions.
Berlin Office
The main responsibility of the second office (with its 13 divisions) is to help the minister and state secretaries to perform their political work in Berlin (with regard to the parliament, cabinet, press, political planning). In 2003, a few operational areas requiring particularly close cooperation with other ministries now based in Berlin were also transferred to Berlin in addition to these core tasks: the divisions responsible for the World Bank/IMF, the European Union, regional development banks, globalisation and trade, crisis prevention, the OECD and the G7/G8, and emergency and refugee aid.