Rethinking German Development Cooperation

00:00:03: International Reports, around the world with the Conrad Adonale

00:00:07: Foundation.

00:00:12: Hello and welcome to another edition of International Reports.

00:00:15: I'm Eric Olander.

00:00:17: Today we're going to focus on the politics of aid and overseas development assistance.

00:00:22: Up until this year when Donald Trump came back to power, the US was by far the largest provider of international humanitarian aid anywhere in the world.

00:00:31: A lot of people expected Trump to cut back on US assistance, But most people did not expect that USAID's thirty-five billion dollar annual budget would be eliminated effectively overnight.

00:00:43: But there's a deeper issue here that's important to understand.

00:00:47: A lot of Americans just don't feel it's their responsibility to pay for food and healthcare in other countries.

00:00:55: I want to give you some insight into this mindset.

00:00:58: A couple of months ago, a U.S.

00:01:00: Senator by the name of Bernie Morena from the rural Midwestern state of Ohio, spoke at an event in Bogota, Colombia, where he articulated the frustration that a lot of Americans, particularly conservatives, who make up a large part of the senator's MAGA base, feel about giving money to poor countries.

00:01:19: Is that the pleasure of, and I think Ruben will say it's truly a pleasure, when you go out and campaign, and you go day to day, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen hours a day, and you go to every corner of the state talking to real people.

00:01:31: People who work for a living and all kinds of professions.

00:01:34: and if I walked into a random coffee shop in Chillicothe, Ohio and I just Talked to the first person I met there who could it be?

00:01:42: a truck driver?

00:01:43: somebody who works at the Kenworths factory?

00:01:45: somebody works at the VA you name it and said hey how much foreign aid Should we give anybody?

00:01:52: The answer would be zero.

00:01:55: I want you to understand that.

00:01:57: that that's the feeling of America today.

00:02:00: that's different then the feeling it was in the mid nineties when we had a surplus when our total debt was.

00:02:09: A low low number of only fifteen trillion dollars and now it's thirty seven trillion and there's a feeling like our industry.

00:02:18: i got hurt that these factories that once employed this person at that coffee shop in chile coffee that that factory now exist in a foreign country not because they didn't do the right job but because they were chasing lower cost labor.

00:02:31: that's just a reality.

00:02:33: In germany public support for international development finance is declining.

00:02:37: that said and this is really important to underline.

00:02:41: A majority of the German public still supports providing some level of international assistance, even though a lot of people are now starting to ask the same questions that we just heard from the US Senator.

00:02:53: So this is prompting a rethink in Germany over the country's international development cooperation and what its objectives are.

00:02:59: And there's a fascinating article in the print edition of international reports that explores these new complex financial and political realities surrounding aid.

00:03:09: Pragmatism in times of crisis, recommendations for a realignment of German development cooperation.

00:03:15: I'm thrilled to have two of the authors of that report.

00:03:18: Join me today on the show.

00:03:20: Suzanne Conrad is a policy advisor for rule of law and security in Sub-Saharan Africa and for Anglophone West Africa at the Conrad Adenauer Foundation.

00:03:30: And Olaf Wintzik is the head of the Conrad Adenauer Foundation's multinational development policy dialogue in Brussels.

00:03:37: Suzanne, Olaf.

00:03:38: Welcome to international reports.

00:03:40: Thank you for the invite.

00:03:42: Thanks for the vacation.

00:03:44: It's wonderful to have you both.

00:03:45: This is such a timely topic.

00:03:47: And again, we started the conversation looking at what's happening in the United States, but we're going to focus on what's going on in Germany and all of I just like to start.

00:03:56: with you to help us better understand for our viewers and listeners who may not be as familiar with the political climate in Germany today and about the discourse that's taking place about international development assistance.

00:04:08: Tell us a little bit about that and what the report you worked on is trying to achieve in terms of impacting this debate.

00:04:15: There are several dimensions here.

00:04:18: So on the one hand, there is the general trend that there will be less money that we will have to we pay debt, that we have to focus on strengthening our competitiveness, that we have to cut in a number of areas, but at the same time we also have to massively increase, and rightfully so by the way, defense spending.

00:04:40: So the development policy budget or development budget is getting under pressure.

00:04:44: So there is more scrutiny, there is a harder look at expenses.

00:04:49: The second point is Well, it's kind of a global trend as well.

00:04:52: I mean, you've mentioned it for the US where it has been particularly radical, but you see it in other European countries as well, that there are cuts in development aid, that the commitment to spending zero point seven percent of the GDP is far from being a given.

00:05:07: So this is also generally European trend that we see here.

00:05:11: And the debate also in Germany has in a geopolitical environment where things are rougher, where it's more about interests, where values have less traction.

00:05:23: There is of course also more the question, what is our geopolitical dividend of this?

00:05:27: We have been spending a lot and Germany has been one of the major donors worldwide of development aid, so now there is more scrutiny.

00:05:35: What did we spend it for?

00:05:37: How efficient has it been?

00:05:39: Why are making cuts at home if there are and and keep spending development aid abroad?

00:05:45: I mean, there is obviously a strong case for that, but this is a bit dilemma, the discussion that you have at home.

00:05:52: And therefore, there is increasing scrutiny.

00:05:55: Yeah.

00:05:55: Well, Suzanne, let's pick up the conversation and those questions that Olaf talks about, about what is the geopolitical dividend and what is the argument to German taxpayers who Olaf pointed out, much like we heard in the United States and other European countries who are feeling a lot of pressure right now to pay for defense, to pay for better schools, to pay for lots of different things.

00:06:17: And yet the needs of people around the world in poorer countries may not be top of their priority list.

00:06:24: So talk about the return on investment for this that the argument calls for to make to German taxpayers.

00:06:31: Well, yeah, very much interesting question.

00:06:33: First of all, I mean, we see a huge geopolitical shift around the world and it's also hitting hard Germany.

00:06:39: As you can see, this is what my colleague said in the sense of we have to increase the defense budget also for the German government.

00:06:47: And in this sense, Germany has to change also the development aid when at the development.

00:06:53: budget when you look to Sub-Saharan Africa and it's getting really harder to explain to the population why it is so important still to invest in our neighboring continents like Sub-Saharan Africa.

00:07:04: When you look to such an unstable region like the Sahel region or maybe you see the geopolitical shifts impacting the Horn of Africa and especially also the Red Sea security arena, as a main trade route also for Germany.

00:07:18: It's getting also clearer for the German population that we have to invest in a sense of security issues, but also because of migration and especially also because of illegal migration, which is a huge conversation going on in the German public.

00:07:34: This question of migration often times that clouds this question about whether or not there should be aid given to people who are coming into Europe and at the same time giving aid to countries where they're coming from.

00:07:44: Olaf, how does migration impact this conversation about international development assistance?

00:07:50: Well, it plays an increasingly important role.

00:07:52: You see it also at the European level where when discussing the future of European development aid, there is now the reflection to have actually stronger conditionality brought into that.

00:08:03: And there is, it's a huge academic debate as well, what the link between migration and development actually is.

00:08:10: And it's quite controversial to be honest, so it's difficult to make a clear cut link there.

00:08:15: But it's true that it dominates a lot of the public debate.

00:08:19: I would say that there is definitely a link when... Development aid, particularly when it's targeted at strengthening governance structures, can actually help to stabilize countries and fragility.

00:08:31: Country fragility is one of the main factors that leads also to migration.

00:08:35: So in that there is definitely a link.

00:08:38: I would maybe just briefly also add one point to what my colleague said.

00:08:42: I think there is a strong case for development policy still for the provision of global public goods.

00:08:47: If you look at global health, strengthening health systems all over the world, it's also in our interest.

00:08:53: This is, by the way, a case that we have to make an interest based for development policy.

00:08:57: If weak health system enabled the spread of pandemics, these pandemics don't stop at borders.

00:09:03: At some point, as we've seen during COVID, they come to us.

00:09:06: Is there a consensus on that in Germany?

00:09:09: Or is that an argument that is difficult to make to a population that may not be as open to that idea?

00:09:16: I mean, depends a bit.

00:09:18: On the topic, I would say, when it comes to the support for global health, the support is relatively strong across party lines, except for the far right, the AFD, so the extreme right, you know, they are lost case on that topic.

00:09:32: But among the other political forces, there is a relatively strong consensus.

00:09:35: On development aid as such, there are differences regarding conditionality, regarding what to focus on.

00:09:42: So you see differences between the political groups on this matter.

00:09:47: Well, let's shift to the geopolitics because that was a major theme of the article.

00:09:52: Susanna, I want to read two quotes from it and get your take because China and Russia do figure into this argument quite prominently.

00:09:59: You said in the article, again, you and your co-authors, that this should be deliberately positioned as a counter model to the authoritarian approaches of China and Russia in which human rights and rule of law standards have no place.

00:10:12: It is in Germany's and Europe's strategic interest not to leave the field open to actors such as Russia and China, particularly in geopolitically significant developing countries.

00:10:23: This is a topic that's particularly important for you, who covers West Africa, where Russia and China are quite prominent.

00:10:31: Talk to us about the geopolitics of this argument.

00:10:37: When you look to the Sahel region, especially to the so-called states of the alliance des Etades de Sahel, the aliens of the Sahel countries, this is Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

00:10:48: And in the past years, we saw an incredible, huge shift.

00:10:51: when influencing these countries.

00:10:53: So five years ago, the biggest part of these countries, they've been the European Union, but also France, also a bit of obvious reasons for France.

00:11:01: But five years later, you can see an incredible impact of Russia, especially in these states.

00:11:07: So France is out right now in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

00:11:11: And they came also with the propaganda against the West, but especially also Europe, hitting also the European Union approach hard in the Sahel region.

00:11:21: So the Sahel region is a really good example of how you can really follow the geopolitical shift which is happening worldwide.

00:11:30: And now the European Union, even Germany, has to struggle to come back and convince again even these military governments that we are the right partner on the ground.

00:11:40: And the Sahel region is especially also important for Europe, because it's also called, or as I call it, NATO-Southern flank.

00:11:48: Because what Russia is doing in the Eastern flank is Europe, you can see it's aligned also with what Russia is doing in the Sahel region.

00:11:55: But the other region in Africa is as well the Horn of Africa.

00:11:58: When you see a huge geopolitical shift in the sense also of countries influencing the countries of the Horn of Africa, like Turkey, but also Saudi Arabia, or even also the Emirates, and they pushing back also the European Union and Germany and we have to work much more harder also on our communication, what we are looking for in these countries and what our interests.

00:12:22: Olaf, this is a big challenge because the United States pulling back not only from its international development financial assistance, and by the way, the U.S.

00:12:30: is not alone.

00:12:31: As you pointed out, European assistance is down overall.

00:12:34: The Chinese are moving aggressively into multilateral organizations like the United Nations.

00:12:39: They're filling voids at the African Union.

00:12:41: In fact, at the G-twenty summit, we've seen that the Chinese are being much more active.

00:12:47: This is beyond Africa a challenge, but I'm wondering, is there consensus within Europe, not just Germany, on how to confront the Russia and China challenge when it comes to international development assistance.

00:12:58: Well, there is in so far a consensus or relatively broad consensus as much as you can have it with twenty seven new member states, but overall there's a relatively broad consensus that we cannot just leave the void open or a vacuum to be filled by particularly China and to a certain extent Russia as well.

00:13:17: So there is an awareness of that.

00:13:19: There is also an awareness of the budget crunch and of the lack of financial means.

00:13:24: So of course we have received here in Europe a lot of calls also from partners from particularly Sub-Saharan Africa but also other parts of the world to fill the void that the US has left.

00:13:36: But the reply is This void is so gigantic that we cannot really fill it.

00:13:42: But there is at least a consensus that there are a few priority areas where the EU might still try to at least try to fill a minimal part of this void, but it cannot fill it overall.

00:13:53: I think that there's also a consensus about.

00:13:55: Then, of course, on which regions to prioritize, there you have different opinions.

00:14:01: So what happens if you can't fill this void?

00:14:03: Then does that imply that the Chinese and the Russian influence only gets larger?

00:14:09: That is indeed the danger, but I would not only look at China and Russia here.

00:14:13: My colleague has rightly pointed out that you have other actors.

00:14:16: moving in Turkey is a particularly important case, but also several of the Gulf countries, even India here and there, although not with development assistance as such, but with a stronger presence.

00:14:26: I think European side it's important to become more creative.

00:14:30: so of course the more to focus on certain issues where I would say the economic and the geopolitical dividend are probably the biggest and also to not only look at development policy as the only tool.

00:14:41: I mean development policy is very important tool but it's part of the toolbox.

00:14:45: so for some countries we see that for example better access to the European market trade agreements actually rather loans then or guarantees rather than kind of classic development assistance are a more interesting instrument than it used to be the case.

00:15:03: So in that case, I think from the European side will have to become more creative in order not to leave the vacuum too large.

00:15:09: Yeah, Suzanne, part of the creativity that you raise in the article with your co-authors is a greater role for German business to play this because it can't be just government alone that does this.

00:15:20: What do you have in mind when you think of a greater role for German business to play in international development assistance in this debate?

00:15:27: Yeah, first of all, what we have to do and especially also the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation Development because they are responsible for and raise a better interest also for German investors investing to Africa.

00:15:40: So the problem is at the moment that while German investors are not very much interested are having not that interest and they should maybe have to invest in African countries.

00:15:50: And it has something to do with the German mentality and economic mentality.

00:15:54: It's a bit based on not take too much risks.

00:15:57: So what we have to do also as policymakers but also policy advisors is to convince first of all also German investors to invest in these countries.

00:16:08: and also making clear that this is an improvement for their companies on their own and to set up also some rules and regulations and help and support even also German companies to invest in countries like Nigeria or maybe even the Democratic Republic of Congo because we are depending a lot also on China because of critical minerals as you know.

00:16:33: and the German industry and also other European countries need to cut or at least to diminish the dependency of critical minerals from China, which China has taken out from Sub-Saharan African countries.

00:16:47: So it's in their utmost importance and for the company as such to invest more in the countries but also to improve the German industry in the upcoming years and make it more robust also in the sense of defence.

00:17:00: Olaf, I'd like you to weigh in a little bit on this role for German business that you see and that you were hearing Suzanne talk about.

00:17:06: Well, absolutely.

00:17:08: I think that there is a strong case.

00:17:10: But for this, the development policy also has both on a European level as on a German level has to be also more business friendly in that way.

00:17:18: So to adapt a bit the instruments, I mean that the involvement of a private sector is not a dirty word.

00:17:23: This is by the way, even and I would say a mentality change that you will have.

00:17:27: need to have at some people of the development ministry.

00:17:30: so there's a strong case.

00:17:31: of course also this means when designing these kind of projects we also have to look at where is a bit German business actually competitive or European businesses.

00:17:40: so we should avoid what sometimes happened in the past that from a European side or from a German side the design of project was such that you know it was great project but the only ones competitive were non-European but I don't know for example Chinese companies.

00:17:55: so this is something to be avoided and we should take this I think better into account also to sell development policy better at home because every member of parliament will be asked on the local level How do local SMEs or how does local business actually benefit from this as well?

00:18:13: So I think this is a case that we have to make in a better way.

00:18:16: And there are certainly sectors where also Germany or European businesses are still very competitive.

00:18:22: For example, when it comes to water management, the water sector, this is something where on international level we're still I think top notch.

00:18:29: I want to close our discussion looking at the big challenge that you raised in the article, again, with your co-authors about the need to better coordinate across the different German ministries and these different poles of power in the German body politic.

00:18:45: So we're talking about the foreign ministry, security, economic and development policies.

00:18:50: all have to be united in some way.

00:18:53: so it becomes this all of government approach to it.

00:18:57: That is something that We've been talking about in the United States for a long time.

00:19:02: It's something that a lot of Western democracies look at China with a certain degree of envy that they have been more effective in kind of binding together some of their ministries and breaking apart the poles of power and the silos.

00:19:15: Suzanne, let's get your final reflections on the magnitude of that challenge of getting the different ministries and the different poles of power in German.

00:19:24: politics to coordinate and align on this issue of international development assistance.

00:19:30: Yes, at the moment there are some ongoing discussions how to better align mostly the federal ministry for economic cooperation and development, but also the foreign affairs ministry and even also the defense ministry.

00:19:43: And we had some background discussions with the federal ministry for economic cooperation and development and they try to make it better.

00:19:49: So actually what they started is first of all to look for reforms internally, but also how to align to other ministries.

00:19:58: But what I see so far, I think we have to do more and also moving forward and having a much more better also communication within the ministries, which I don't see so much better at the moment, I have to confess.

00:20:11: So all three ministries have to work much more closely with each other, but it's really hard also to get out of this what you said before to this silo thinking.

00:20:22: But the pressure is high on Germany when you look to the Eastern flank, but also when you're looking into development cooperation.

00:20:28: So all three ministries have to push forward also their interest in having a better communication with each other for an aligned at least approach with regards to foreign affairs.

00:20:41: Yeah, Olaf, what's... You're going to get the final word here, but what's your take on this challenge of aligning the ministries and aligning the agendas?

00:20:51: democracy, this is a challenge.

00:20:53: Honestly, I prefer that to having an autocracy where everything is done from the top.

00:20:57: But it's true, it is a challenge.

00:20:59: I think there is now an opportunity with the National Security, the new National Security Council that we have, which is supposed to coordinate foreign policy better and to make it more coherent.

00:21:10: So this is kind of a new experience for us.

00:21:12: I think it has been created just this year.

00:21:14: But I hope that this will contribute exactly to do that.

00:21:17: And it's something that we as a Konrad Adnal Foundation have been

00:21:22: Okay.

00:21:23: The article is Pragmatism in Times of Crisis.

00:21:26: Recommendations for a realignment of German development cooperation.

00:21:30: It's a fascinating article about a debate that is going on right now.

00:21:34: Of course, this is focused on Germany, but I think we could have the same conversation in France, in the UK, and certainly in the United States today.

00:21:42: So very, very timely.

00:21:43: We're going to put a link to that in the show notes, and I encourage you to take a close read at it.

00:21:49: Susan Conrad is a policy advisor for rule of law and security in Sub-Saharan Africa and for Anglophone West Africa at the Conrad Adenauer Foundation.

00:21:58: And Olaf Witzig is the head of the Conrad Adenauer Foundation's multinational development policy dialogue in Brussels.

00:22:05: Susan, Olaf, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedules to share some of your insights on this important issue.

00:22:12: Thank you.

00:22:13: Thanks a lot, Eric.

00:22:14: And that'll do it for this edition of International Reports.

00:22:17: We'll be back again next month with another fascinating discussion on some of these timely topics on behalf of everybody at the Conrad Adenauer Foundation around the world.

00:22:26: I want to thank you for joining us today for listening and for watching.

00:22:29: I'm Eric Hollander.

00:22:30: See you next time.