Germany’s Rise as a Top Donor at Devex Pro Briefing

IDOS Director Prof. Anna-Katharina Hornidge argues that Germany should rely on global partnerships rather than one-sided dependencies.

On 19 May, Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge contributed to a Devex Top Briefing online discussing “What Germany’s Rise as Top Donor Means for Global Development”. Germany has often been called a hesitant leader in global development, and having become the largest bilateral donor given the US’s pullback whilst significantly cutting development spending itself, the question arises what Germany will make of this position and how it might impact the fractured geopolitical landscape. Anna-Katharina Hornidge jointed Michael Krake, Member of Expert Commission, Germany and the Global South, and Abdoul Salam Bello of the African Development Bank to discuss these questions. Her key message was: the biggest liberal democracy in the heart of Europe and one of the largest economies globally whose wealth depends largely on exports, fully relies on partnerships and on a network of partners that ensures balance, rather than one-sided dependencies – for Europe and for Germany. Given that our international economic and political order is being reordered, this affects also the field of development policy. The challenge and task for the coming years for this policy field is: to reinvent itself as cooperation policy, i.e. as the external policy field of Germany that coordinates across the different external policy fields Germany’s strategic partnership approaches with low and middle income economies and societies.