Structure and Organisation

There are about 600 people working at the German Development Ministry (BMZ). About 80 per cent of them are based at the Ministry's Bonn office, while the others are at the Berlin office. A certain number of Ministry officials are always to be found working outside the Ministry, engaged in development policy assignments lasting several years in other parts of the world. This "rotation" of staff between Germany and other countries means that, at any one time, about ten per cent of the BMZ’s staff are working in German missions abroad, for international organisations or in specific development projects.

The BMZ does not have the usual substructure of government agencies. For the execution of its projects it commissions what are known as implementing organisations. These organisations then work with executing agencies in the partner country concerned, which are selected by the government of that country.

Senior Ministry officials

The political leadership of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) consists of Federal Minister Dirk Niebel, Parliamentary State Secretary Gudrun Kopp and State Secretary Hans-Jürgen Beerfeltz.

The German Chancellor’s G8 Personal Representative for Africa, Günter Nooke, reports to the political leadership of the Ministry. There are five divisions directly supporting the work of the BMZ’s senior officials. They are responsible, among other things, for press and public relations, parliamentary and cabinet affairs, basic development policy issues, and for protocol and language services.

The political leadership of the Ministry is also supported by a policy planning staff with responsibility for cross-cutting tasks relating to the strategic planning and coordination of development cooperation.

The implementation structure task force also reports directly to the political leadership. This task force is responsible for the conceptual development of the reform of the implementing structures of official German development cooperation.

The Directorates-General

Directorate-General 1 (made up of 14 divisions) is responsible for general administrative tasks and also, among other things, for cooperation with civil society forces such as NGOs, churches and political foundations, for cooperation with the private sector, for civil society engagement and for development education. The division for evaluation and auditing reports directly to the head of this Directorate-General.

Directorate-General 2 (made up of 11 divisions) is responsible for development cooperation with countries and regions in Asia and Latin America, for the topics of good governance and human rights, for general policy issues and for organising bilateral development cooperation – for example, the coordination and integration of all development policy measures and the management and monitoring of the projects and programmes in the individual countries.

Directorate-General 3 (made up of 13 divisions) is responsible for development cooperation with countries and regions in Africa and for global and sector-based tasks. These tasks include, for example, the Millennium Development Goals, education, climate protection, water, rural development, health, and resource use.

Directorate-General 4 (made up of 11 divisions) is responsible for development cooperation with South Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus, with the Middle East, and with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and also for the topics of peace and security, emergency and transitional aid, European and multilateral development policy, and globalisation and trade.

Further information regarding the tasks carried out by the individual directorates-general and divisions can be found in the BMZ’s organisational chart, which can be accessed by clicking on the link in the column to the right of this text.

Ministry officials abroad

BMZ employees do not only work in Berlin and Bonn; the BMZ and the Federal Foreign Office second officers to work in the field of economic cooperation in partner countries and international organisations. Their role is to coordinate development activities. About 50 BMZ employees are currently working in this capacity either in German foreign missions or at international organisations.

The BMZ has employees seconded to the following embassies: Accra, Addis Ababa, Bamako, Beijing, Belgrade, Bishkek, Brasília, Cairo, Colombo, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Dhaka, Hanoi, Islamabad, Jakarta, Kabul, Kampala, Kathmandu, Kigali, Kinshasa, La Paz, Lilongwe, Lima, Lusaka, Managua, Maputo, Nairobi, New Delhi, Ougadougou, Phnom Penh, Pretoria, Rabat, Ramallah, Sanaa, Tegucigalpa, Tbilisi, Windhoek, Yaoundé.

The BMZ also has representatives in the permanent German missions at the following international institutions: the United Nations (Geneva and New York), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), the European Union (Brussels), the Food and Agriculture Organization (Rome), the World Food Programme (Rome), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Rome).

The BMZ also has staff on the boards of the World Bank and the African, Asian, Inter-American and Caribbean Development Banks.

(As at 2010)