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Countries
Country concentration
Until the end of the 1990s, Germany provided assistance to some 120 developing countries. Then, in 1998, the strategy was changed. The German government cut to between 70 and 75 the number of developing countries receiving assistance – a vital step towards enhancing aid effectiveness.
In their agreement of November 2005, Germany's governing coalition parties, the SPD and the CDU/CSU, set the medium-term objective of concentrating bilateral cooperation on 60 countries. And so, in February 2008, the Development Ministry adopted a new list of countries. In future, official bilateral cooperation will be limited to 57 partner countries. Other individual countries will also receive assistance as part of regional programmes or programmes dealing with specific sectors, such as fighting HIV/AIDS, climate and forest protection and crisis prevention. In 17 countries, ongoing programmes will be completed as planned and bilateral development cooperation then brought to an end.
The move is in line with the Paris Agenda on Aid Effectiveness and implements the recommendations made in the OECD/DAC Peer Review of Germany. It will make the German government's efforts more effective and give it both greater scope for shaping developments in the partner countries and more influence within the donor community.
In regional terms, Africa will remain the main focus of German development cooperation. Almost half of all partner countries (24) are in sub-Saharan Africa. They will particularly benefit from the plans to double funding for Africa by 2010.
However, Germany will continue to work with countries that are not on the list through its contributions to the development policy of the European Union and multilateral organisations and via its contributions to the HIPC Initiative. Promoting regional cooperation between developing countries and supporting regional organisations have also become increasingly important.
The BMZ selected the partner countries on the basis of the overarching goals of German development policy (reducing poverty, securing peace and realising democracy, achieving justice in globalisation and protecting the environment). The decision as to which countries Germany engages in development cooperation with depends on various important criteria. The selection takes into account, for example, development needs, governance performance, the relevance of Germany's contribution compared with other bilateral and multilateral donors, political factors, regional aspects and established ties. The list of partner countries is not cast in stone but is regularly reviewed in an interministerial consultation process.
Underlying concepts
Country strategies are the management instrument for country-level implementation of the BMZ's development objectives. Regional strategies form the link between the ministry's overarching development policy principles and aims and the individual country strategies. In an extensive dialogue, the strategies, priority areas and objectives of cooperation are negotiated by the partners and then laid out in priority area strategy papers.
The framework and guidelines for the negotiations are provided by the national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) drawn up by the cooperation countries, and by the agreed priority areas of bilateral cooperation. German bilateral cooperation has a clear profile. Cooperation focuses on a few priority areas so as to make more effective and more efficient use of development funds. It is also the task of donor countries to devise a coordinated approach, which combines bilateral, European and international development cooperation in a sensible way.
A number of partner countries have already launched initiatives to develop country or sector strategies along with the donor community operating in that country, and to agree on an appropriate division of labour in order to put the strategies into practice. Germany plays an active part in initiatives of this sort, contributes its experience in the pertinent priority area and aligns its inputs consistently with the common implementation agreements.
