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Fostering regional cooperation

Sub-Saharan Africa

Women running with their arms raised on a path in Tanzania. Copyright: phalanxSub-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 structural change process, 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.

Over the last ten years, Africa has experienced its longest period of growth since the 1960s, with an average rate of growth of about 5 per cent, not only in countries rich in raw materials. The current financial crisis has, however, slowed growth in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Monetary Fund reckons that in 2009 the region's economy will grow by no more than 1.5 per cent. For 2010 growth of 3.8 per cent is forecast. Many countries have been hard hit by falling world market prices for commodities.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world which has seen poverty worsen since 1990. In 2005 a total of 100 million people more lived in extreme poverty than was the case fifteen years earlier. The poverty rate has remained unchanged at over 50 per cent, and 29 per cent of the population is undernourished.

One quarter of the population suffers as a result of crises of state or armed conflicts. More than 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

School children in Africa. Copyright: Laudes Martial Mbon/IRINThe new political dynamism that marks many African states today, is a good foundation on which to build stronger social, economic and ecological development across the entire sub-Saharan African region. The growing international consensus about development objectives and national poverty reduction strategies is also encouraging. Major progress has been achieved in some areas. The rate of school enrolment in southern Africa, for instance, rose by 15 percentage points between 2000 and 2007.

Sub-Saharan Africa benefits more than any other region in the world from the HIPC and MDRI debt relief initiatives. All in all the states of the region have seen almost 90 billion US dollars worth of debt cancelled. 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.

The Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) agreed at the Second EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon on 13 December 2007 provides a new political framework for action for the European Union and the German government vis à vis Africa. Within the scope of eight thematic partnerships, the strategy is implemented with the cooperation of a great many stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society and national parliaments.

The eight thematic partnerships

  1. Peace and security

  2. Democratic governance and human rights

  3. Trade, regional integration and infrastructure

  4. Millennium Development Goals

  5. Energy

  6. Climate change

  7. Migration, mobility and employment

  8. Science, information society and space

Cooperation goes well beyond the confines of development policy to embrace issues of global political importance such as migration, climate change and peace and security, and involves various German federal ministries.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development acts as lead agency at European level within the partnerships on energy, and democratic governance and human rights.

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

Germany is very much interested in seeing Africa resolve its problems independently with its own capacities. The continent is an important partner in tackling global problems. Without the collaboration of strong African states it will be impossible to secure peace and fight global poverty, tackle climate change and resolve energy and raw materials problems.

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 on certain fields of cooperation and to a better international division of labour. It also helps to fine-tune cooperation concepts and strategies.

The aim is to draw up a profile for German development cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa that is both visible and effective in development terms in the international context, and to put this into practice with our African partners. 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, BMZ began in 2004 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:

Alongside cooperation with individual African states the promotion of regional and pan-African organisations is becoming increasingly important.

Between 2004 and 2007, funding for development cooperation with Africa was increased by 34 per cent. If we include debt cancellation, funding in fact rose by 56 per cent. For 2009, pledges worth 1.1 billion euros are planned for sub-Saharan Africa.

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 economic and political 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 African 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

NEPAD meeting in the Palais des Nations. Copyright: phalanxThe 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 countries of the region support one another within the framework of the African Peer Review Mechanism.

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)


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