The Current Column

Reset for development policy

Last chance for a fundamental reform of German development policy?

Janus, Heiner / Armin von Schiller
The Current Column (2025)

Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), The Current Column of 28 April 2025

Bonn, 28 April 2025. According to the coalition agreement, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will remain a standalone ministry. Rarely has the existence of the ministry been questioned so much by society and across parties as in recent months. Development cooperation is under increasing pressure to justify itself and is losing social support. We are convinced that incremental reforms which involve “more of the same” or “now more than ever” will lead to a dead end. Instead, far-reaching reforms are needed.

Only a strategically reoriented, credible and self-critical development cooperation has a future. The good news: The necessary reforms are within BMZ’s sphere of influence and responsibility. Nothing stands in the way of a comprehensive structural reform under the leadership of the BMZ. In order to be able to define and implement such a reform during this legislative period, a self-critical review of German development cooperation should take place immediately after the new federal government has been constituted.

Three areas of reform are indispensable:

1. Less is more: Clear goals instead of topic overload
German development cooperation needs a strategic realignment. It suffers from a “jack of all trades, master of none” problem. For decades, the portfolio has been expanded without following the “omnibus principle”. New themes and goals have been added without giving up old ones. The result: a fragmented policy field that is difficult to steer. Effective development cooperation requires goals that are based on a realistic assessment of one’s own ability to bring about change. The BMZ should “de-prioritise” significant parts of its portfolio and pursue a limited number of three to five thematic goals in order to raise its profile. Such a process requires the transparent communication of interests and values as well as a conscious approach to address resulting trade-offs. This is the only way to enable a sincere and constructive discussion within Germany and with international partners.

2. Measuring impact – in an honest and differentiated manner
The definition of clear objectives is the basis for assessing and strengthening development effectiveness. In order to be credible, German development cooperation must analyse its effects on three levels in a more thorough and differentiated way than in the past: Firstly, the structural level – how well are the administrative processes of the ministry, the budget and the implementing organisations aligned with the objectives? Secondly, the micro-level – what concrete and measurable impacts do individual projects achieve on the ground? And thirdly, the macro-level – what contribution does Germany make to solving global problems in cooperation with partner countries and other donors? In addition to strengthening procedures for quality assurance, such an interlinked assessment of effectiveness requires professional competence and, above all, the political courage to speak openly about failures.

3. Willingness to learn instead of self-portrayal
The backlog of development cooperation reforms is not due to a lack of ideas, but to a lack of persistence. There is a lack of willingness to prioritise, to learn from mistakes, and to pursue long-term change. The pervasive pressure to show results has meant that public self-portrayal of development cooperation is often positively skewed. While experts from different academic contexts argue that it must be assumed that 80 percent of development projects do not achieve the desired results, development organisations' own reports show high success rates in comparison. Development projects deal with complex problems in difficult contexts. Frequent failure is therefore to be expected and should be used as an opportunity to learn. The pressure to report only on successes prevents critical self-reflection and learning opportunities. A long-term viable development cooperation therefore requires a change in the BMZ towards greater tolerance of mistakes, a willingness to learn and a long-term focus.

The current coalition agreement contains only vague references to a fundamental reform, for example with regard to more competition in technical cooperation. Whether and in what form this concrete structural reform of the implementing organisations makes sense, however, can only be assessed once the areas identified above have been addressed. The type of technical cooperation that Germany needs depends on the objectives of the BMZ. Here, too, the first step is of a political rather than technical nature: the central challenge is to define one’s own goals more clearly, to coordinate them in interaction with other ministries and also to establish interministerial coherence in their implementation.

Broad support for development cooperation in Germany is waning. Without a resolute and fundamental reform, this policy area faces a continuous decline in relevance – especially at a time when strategic co-shaping of global challenges has become even more relevant. The BMZ has the potential to lead such a reform – and in the new legislative period it has the opportunity to act. In fact, it may, also be the last chance to preserve the German development cooperation as a future-proof and independent policy field.