D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 3, May/June 2001, p. 27)

As announced by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in January, the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) and the Carl Duisberg Society (CDG) are to merge. The decision to merge the two governmental organisations active in the field of personnel cooperation follows the consolidation in the field of financial cooperation in the autumn of last year when the Reconstruction Loan Corporation (KfW) announced the takeover of the German Development Company (DEG).

The decision on the long-discussed DSE-CDG merger was welcomed by both institutions. DSE Director General, Dr. Heinz Bühler, emphasised that his organisation and CDG have been talking to each other since the beginning of 2000 in order to find possibilities for closer cooperation between the two sister institutions. He thinks a merger of DSE and CDG is a reasonable measure to increase the efficiency of their work and to underline the importance of dialogue and training in the context of German development cooperation as global structural policy. CDG General Manager Dr. Norbert Schneider also pointed to the expected efficiency of the new institute, which is due to start up at the beginning of 2002 and will have a combined staff of about 900 and an annual budget of about DM 280 million. More than 30,000 people per year are expected to take part in the institute’s advanced training programmes for specialists and managers. About one-third of the participants will come from Germany, the rest from some 100 countries around the world.

Giving the reasons for the merger, the BMZ said advanced training of specialists and managers from developing countries was to be designed more efficiently in the future. The planned integration was in line with the recommendations of an appraisal which the German Development Institute (GDI) had undertaken for the BMZ since July 2000. The appraisal coins the term ‘International Training Cooperation’ for the new institute’s area of responsibility - thus positioning it as the third pillar of bilateral development cooperation alongside Technical Cooperation (TC) and Financial Cooperation (FC). But there was no immediate agreement on the name of the new institute. The BMZ statement spoke of an ‘Agency for International Training’ (GIB), while the DIE appraisal suggested the name ‘German Agency for International Training Cooperation’.

The BMZ will over the next few months discuss the details of the merger with supervisory bodies, staff representations and DSE and CDG employees. The German federal states and the business sector are also to be involved in the development of the new institute, which is to have the following tasks:

• advanced training of specialists and managers from developing countries;
• dialogue and exchanges of experience between managers from developing and industrialised countries;
• information work on developmental subjects; and
• international or inter-cultural qualification of professionals from Germany and other industrialised nations.

Implementing the merger

Implementation of the merger will follow the timetable proposed in the GDI appraisal. A steering group in the BMZ is in charge of managing the process. The merger is to be completed until the beginning of 2002, ahead of the campaign for the German Federal elections due later in the year.

The new institute will give training cooperation an enhanced status in German bilateral development policy. The GDI appraisal names several areas in which there is a need and demand in partner countries for support:

• support in institutional capacity-building in initial and advanced training facilities;
• assistance in drawing up concepts for systemic solutions, for instance in modernising public administrations;
• increased imparting of governance-related qualifications;
• dialogue and advanced training offers for the promotion of sustainable development;and
• advanced training and dialogue programmes which will help the partner countries’ integration in global learning, research and knowledge networks.

The report added that there was also a demand for “specific German offers” due, among other things, to the partner countries’ esteem for the strong practical orientation of vocational training in Germany and their interest in the experience Germany gained in integrating the former German Democratic Republic.

“It is notable that in the development cooperation of other bilateral donors there is practically no non-project-tied input offer that can be compared with the German programme spectrum,” the appraisal said. That is why the GDI proposed as an international benchmark for the new institution the World Bank Institute (WBI), which has a range of instruments, tasks and subject areas similar to those of the DSE and CDG. “The World Bank deploys its training subsidiary aggressively in transferring its developmental models and best practices in the partner countries”, the appraisal says. The German training institute will be more low-key in this respect. It will not be about promoting the German model, but about a critical assessment of opportunities and risks of concrete approaches to solving problems.

The appraisal also proposes to putting an end to DSE and GDG longterm training programmes for acquiring basic qualifications. “Medium-developed and advanced countries of the South now offer comparable qualification opportunities.” Instead, the GDI says, developmental education and information work should be built up to become the third pillar of international training cooperation, alongside advanced training and dialogue.

As far as the new institute’s external structure is concerned, the GDI recommends flexible solutions in partner countries. For example, if it is about the precisely targeted secondment of partner country scholarship holders from local private sector companies to German businesses, hiring a local expert to work in the local German Chamber of Commerce could be most suitable solution. If it is a matter of a broader range of training cooperation measures, it could make more sense for the local office of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) to put local experts under contract.