The development minister wants to “shape the future globally together”. But she understands “together” differently than before.
Photo: dpa/Britta Pedersen
“I would like us to talk more clearly about interests,” says Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan (SPD) when she presented a new strategy for the way her house works on Monday. In doing so, she names the main thing that changes in the federal government’s new development policy: German interests are even more clearly in focus. Security and economic concerns in particular shape the plan. The federal government is joining the trend among industrialized nations to cut development aid.
The reform plan “Shaping the future together globally” presented by Radovan is the result of a process that the minister started shortly after taking office. Overall, she wants to make German development policy “more strategic, more focused and more cooperative.” It proclaims four goals: expand strategic alliances, overcome hunger, poverty and inequalities, promote peace and stability and economic growth.
The rhetoric is not new. What is specifically changing: In the future, Germany will only work with emerging economies such as India, South Africa and Mexico through repayable loans. Because, according to Radovan, “an economic force is there” to combat hunger and poverty. She wants to allocate the budget resources of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) primarily to those countries where “the need is greatest.”
The ministry’s paper names the economic importance of the countries of the Global South for Germany: “as sales markets, investment locations and as suppliers of raw materials, goods and services.”
One focus is to combat hunger in Africa. When it comes to peace policy cooperation, the BMZ wants to concentrate on European neighbors, the Middle East and North Africa, the Sahel zone and the Horn of Africa. To achieve this, projects in other countries would be phased out, for example on the topic of refugees in Latin America and Southeast Asia. The BMZ also wants to reduce bureaucracy and simplify procedures. It wants to work more closely with civil society.
Altered reality
The framework in which Radovan formulates her new strategy is a changing international order. The reform paper names the new role of the USA, the upswing of China and the “new design aspirations of the Brics states” as well as the formation of new “power cores and alliances”. According to Radovan, development policy is a means of strengthening and shaping Germany’s global role – especially as the USA is withdrawing and China and Russia are increasingly filling the “gaps” that are emerging. In the awarding process for projects, “German companies should now be given priority.”
According to the minister, development policy should move “away from the role of classic donors and recipients” and towards partnerships “on equal terms”. Many countries in the Global South expected “real cooperation – no handouts,” which is how the principle of only granting many countries loans is presented. At the same time, the BMZ paper complains that many countries in the Global South are becoming increasingly indebted.
The BMZ says quite openly what the new “cooperation policy” means: it is “consciously used as a geopolitical instrument.” As part of the partnership, all actors should openly state their interests, which also increases credibility. Right at the beginning, the paper names the economic importance of the countries of the Global South for Germany: “as sales markets, investment locations and as suppliers of raw materials, goods and services.” Germany’s prosperity depends to a large extent on whether partnerships with these countries succeed. Development policy is central to Germany’s “soft power” in the Global South.
Since the situation is more tense than it has been since the end of the Cold War, German development policy must also be more closely aligned with security policy. For the latter, the BMZ names three pillars: long-term development policy, military defense and diplomacy.
At the national level, austerity constraints shape the strategy. With the reform process, Radovan wants to ensure that “we use the resources we have as effectively as possible.” Your ministry has around ten billion euros at its disposal this year, around two billion less than in 2023.
“Extended arm of rearmament”
Charlotte Neuhäuser, spokeswoman for global justice for the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag, sees the plans as “nothing more than a glossing over of record cuts.” The reform plan is “part of the global shift to the right in international relations and development policy,” she explained. If the BMZ ties its policy to economic and geopolitical interests, it will make “development policy an extension of corporate interests and rearmament” and continue the trend toward their militarization.
Radovan himself makes it clear: “The idea that development cooperation is a question of moral attitude is outdated.” The BMZ speaks of the “beginning of a new phase of German development policy” with “courage for significant change, prioritization and deprioritization.” What this means: the prioritization of Germany.
