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Aims
Priority areas of German development cooperation
The aim of development cooperation is to give people the freedom to shape their own lives, by making their own decisions and taking responsibility for them, without suffering material hardship.
With this aim in mind, the German government is seeking with its development policy to help make globalisation an opportunity for all.
The sectors that German development cooperation will focus on in particular in the future will be education, health, rural development, good governance and sustainable economic development. The guiding principle in all efforts is the protection of human rights.
Based on the Coalition Agreement, which forms the basis for all actions taken by the German government, six priority areas for German development cooperation can be identified:
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Sustainable poverty reduction
The aim of international and also German development policy is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, at the heart of which is poverty reduction. For the German government, tackling educational poverty is a particularly important aspect in this context. -
Reducing structural deficits
The German government aims to foster good governance in the partner countries of German development cooperation and in international structures. The German government will be pushing among other things for progress to be made in dismantling subsidies for agricultural exports and in concluding the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, which has been going on since 2001. Within the German government, in the European Union and in international organisations, another focus of German development policy will be achieving greater policy coherence for development. Development policy is global structural policy. It serves to promote global public goods such as climate protection, the conservation of environmental resources, and security. -
Encouraging civil society involvement
Civil society involvement is to be supported and harnessed for development policy aims – both in our partner countries and in Germany itself. -
Making private sector activities deliver for development
There can be no sustainable development without sustainable economic development. The German government will involve the private sector in its development cooperation efforts even more strongly in the future. It will do this, for example, by fostering corporate social responsibility and expanding Public-Private Partnerships. The German government will support microfinance loans as a particularly important instrument in terms of fostering self-help. -
Enhancing the effectiveness of German development cooperation
Germany will further increase the effectiveness of its development cooperation, implementing the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action. The German government will undertake organisational and structural reforms with a view to increasing the effectiveness of German development policy. A start has been made with the reform of the GTZ, DED and InWEnt, which are to be merged into one single organisation for Technical Cooperation . The German government will preserve the diversity of German development cooperation through a partnership-based approach whilst increasing its efficiency. -
Improving visibility
Successful development policy needs the support of the people. That is why awareness of German development cooperation must be enhanced. The BMZ will step up its development policy information and education work in order to achieve this.
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