D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 4, July/August 1999, p. 8-11 )

Forty years of the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) are an occasion to look at the past of this institution, to determine its position and to point out perspectives as they become apparent in the light of the global political changes of the nineties and the domestic political upheavals in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Development policy, as development itself, is a continuous process of change; the institutions of development cooperation are consequently subject to the same permanent process of change if they wish to stay up-to-date and have a role in shaping changes in development policy. Looking back, which is necessary for highlighting positions and perspectives, reveals some of the remarkable features which turned the DSE into a special institution of development policy.

The establishment of a development institution, at such an early juncture even some years before the establishment of a ministry for economic cooperation, was truly remarkable. Equally remarkable was the foundation of the DSE as a joint action by the Federation and some of the federal states. The relationship between the Federation and federal states in the field of development policy, which was not without tension in later years, never marred cooperation within the Board of Trustees of the DSE; the commitment of the federal states represented on the Board of Trustees, and their considerable financial and conceptual contributions continue to make an indispensable and valuable contribution to the Federal Republic's commitment to development cooperation.

Dialogue and training
as cornerstones of DSE

From the very beginning the founding fathers of the DSE showed quite extraordinary wisdom and foresight in relation to the DSE's special task: dialogue and training were to provide the foundation for the work of the DSE, or in the words of the DSE Statutes: educational assistance for specialized personnel from developing countries, preparation of German experts for assignments in developing countries and exchange of experience among personalities from developing countries and German specialists were to contribute to fostering the relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and other countries.

"Knowledge is power", a slogan familiar to every schoolchild at the time, may have played a role in the considerations of the founding fathers. In facilitating this set objective "education and exchange of experience" they identified those very areas of activity which later on gained relevance in the development process in general and beyond the developing countries: education, initial and advanced training in later years became one of the three cornerstones of development cooperation (DC) (it would in fact have been more correct to identify it as indispensable cross-sectional element for all sectors of DC; there is no effective way of combatting poverty without knowledge/education: "knowledge is the most effective weapon against poverty", and there is no effective protection of natural resources without basic knowledge and education); in the World Development Report 1998/99, education has been identified as the single most important element of development; the increasing process of globalization reveals that advanced training, vocational qualification and exchange of experience as a process of life-long learning constitute a core element for mastering the globalization process in industrial and developing countries.

10,000 trainees annually

From the very beginning the DSE has been active in the mainstream of development cooperation. With training courses and seminars, scholarship programmes sponsored by the Federal Government for specialists and managerial personnel from developing countries, the preparation of German experts for assignments in developing countries, international dialogue events, the DSE has, over the past decades, addressed approximately 10,000 participants annually from a large number of developing countries, from development institutions and all relevant sectors of development cooperation: education and vocational training, public administration and economic and social development, rural development and public health. The DSE has became one of the main actors in manpower assistance, a focus of the Federal Government's development cooperation.

The political changes in the nineties that witnessed the end of the Cold War, the opening up of the former Eastern Bloc, the rapid economic development in Asia, and the emerging process of globalization also had an impact on development policy and on the activities of the DSE, accompanied, as they were, by political and social changes in the Western countries. The process of change and the resulting pressure of adjustment are enormous and no end is in sight.

New clients for DSE

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the successor states to the former Soviet Union have become clients of development policy and extended the gamut of countries to which the DSE addresses its programmes: albeit as the outcome of a painstaking internal discussion process which sought to bring the political significance of cooperation with the new countries into harmony with the main objective of combatting poverty in the so-called classical developing countries.

The DSE established a new centre, the Public Health Promotion Centre, in former East Berlin and branches in Magdeburg (for industrial occupations promotion) and in Zschortau (for food and agriculture development) ­ a contribution by the DSE towards integrating the new federal states into its development activities, using the existing infrastructure of educational and training institutions.

Almost simultaneously, beginning in the mid-nineties resulting from financial and manpower shortages, the DSE faced the need to concentrate on fewer areas of priority which were more relevant to the development process, and on fewer countries, in order to achieve a greater chance of sustainable impact on the basis of long-term cooperation with fewer partners.

At the same time and with a similar objective in mind, a general trend towards increased coordination of development cooperation is emerging. Country concepts of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) define areas of priority of cooperation with individual countries. Sector papers and regional concepts accompany the attempts to concentrate on more targeted and consistently long-term activities, in order to achieve a more sustainable effect. Actors working on behalf of the BMZ such as the DSE are involved more deeply in the coordination process; their planning is becoming more consistent with the priorities of the country concepts. It is also becoming clear that the coordination process has shifted to coordination in the developing countries, thus primarily involving DC institutions active in developing countries. The DSE, without local representations, faces difficult participatory problems in terms of its involvement.

Changes in training concepts

Significant processes of change are taking place in developing countries as well and influencing the activities of the DSE. The building of training capacities in many developing countries is gaining increasing importance, more and more the demand in many countries is shifting away from training in the classical sense to the development of systems, the creation of suitable political framework conditions and a strengthening of the decisionmaking capacity of decisionmakers. In other words development cooperation is becoming more political, the participants in DSE events more high-ranking and the composition of participants increasingly broader as not only government officials are addressed, but also representatives from the private sector and all social segments of the population.

Therefore the dialogue element of DSE activities is becoming increasingly significant. The globalization process necessitates a continuous exchange of experience among actors. Not the transfer of models, but the exchange of opinions on solutions, the strengthening of problem-solving capacity is now at the centre of discussions. With their appeal to make mutual exchange of experience the basis of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the developing countries, the founding fathers of the DSE obviously anticipated the trend of the years to come.

With its decades of experience in many developing countries, its many partners and the commitment and experience of its staff, the DSE has all the prerequisites for contributing towards shaping this process of change by continuously increasing the quality of its work.

The guidelines for women's promotion in the DSE programme work, the result of an internal working group dealing with this task, provide an orientation for programme activities based on a gender approach; they constitute one of the measures for assuring the quality of DSE's work in the light of the visible changes worldwide in development cooperation; they are also an example of the DSE's intention to contribute towards influencing the process of change in the developing countries through its work. The consideration of needs, interests and viewpoints of men and women is a prerequisite for social development. Development policy and also the work of the DSE can only be formulated on the basis of an analysis of the gender-specific roles and tasks which men and women fulfil in their diverse cultures (as laid down in the DSE gender guidelines).

The guidelines also reflect the DSE's wish to lend deliberate and targeted support to processes of change in developing countries under the aspect of equal participation of women in shaping the social, political and economic life, i.e. taking on a clearly more political role in its work.

Partners must participate
in striving for change

This intention of impacting on political processes of change in developing countries is even more clearly reflected in the formulation of the objectives of the DSE as outlined in the Basic Didactic Concept approved in 1996 ­ this too as a result of long and tedious internal discussions on the role of the DSE and its educational and dialogue activities in the current process of worldwide changes. In the foreground are a more political orientation of its work, an approach to participants based on the principle of participation, sensitization and qualification of political and economic decisionmakers with regard to the necessary framework conditions to allow participation of poorer population segments in the development process. The Basic Didactic Concept of the DSE reads as follows: "Not withstanding any objective material and structural causes for development deficits in the partner countries, the DSE depends on the readiness of its participants to strive for social change, to assume social responsibility and to act accordingly in the political arena. It regards this to be an essential factor for a positive societal development at improving the living conditions of population groups disadvantaged so far."

The ongoing processes of change in the past years in the developing countries and the organization and targeting of development cooperation have shown that advanced training and dialogue events are an indispensable element in promoting this process of change, even if the focus is shifted more towards advanced training rather than initial training, towards more dialogue events and towards a more political objective. There is no doubt that an institution such as the DSE offers enormous potential of experience, flexibility and willingness to contribute towards the process of change.

A high degree of flexibility and creativity will be necessary in the years to come in view of new fields of development action and new accents by the Federal Government and the new Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development as well as of changed domestic framework conditions and ongoing processes of change in the developing countries. It will be a challenge for the future to understand this process as an opportunity for a new approach to development.

What are the perspectives, how can an institution like the DSE address this process? In which areas will the music play, where will the focus of development policy be at internal, national and international level? What deficit situations will the DSE have to deal with?

The development process will forge ahead with great speed in a number of developing countries. Local training capacities will be further developed; the trend will continue to be towards system development, high-quality advanced training, away from project cooperation and towards long-term programmes and strengthening of institutional capacity.

On the basis of its long years of experience of programme work and the increased orientation of its activities to long-term partnership relations, to partners and participants capable of reform and a more political targeting of its work in line with its gender guidelines and the Basic Didactic Concept, the DSE has a good chance of remaining or becoming a relevant and sought-after partner in processes of change in developing countries.

Offering a forum for an
international debate

In addition, the Development Policy Forum (EF) provides the DSE with a flexible versatile instrument recognized and used by the developing countries and by national and international institutions for a dialogue in all sectors and on all types of topics relevant to development policy and to develop solution approaches in cooperation with large number of partners. This area which is particularly relevant in view of the political processes occurring worldwide and in the developing countries in particular should be strengthened and utilized in agreement with the Federal Government.

Another trend which is becoming increasingly important in times of financial and manpower shortages is the updating of the coordination process within the framework of development cooperation. It is not only in connection with the country concepts of the BMZ that this trend has become evident in the past years; the need for better coordination has also become more important at European level, in order to safeguard the coherence of national and European measures; and it is becoming particularly clear in the context of the concepts recently developed by the World Bank on the "comprehensive framework" for development cooperation.

This is not to argue in support of dissolving the plurality of German development cooperation. On the contrary: the plurality of institutions corresponds to the plurality of our society. Plurality increases the effectiveness of development activities, if utilized in a reasonable and targeted way. The coordination process should be designed so as to increase the benefit and effectiveness of work for our partners.

In cooperation with the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and other institutions and organizations the DSE will have to redefine its role, in order to identify its contributions to this process more clearly. In so doing it will be particularly important to contribute to the coordination process increasingly taking place in the developing countries. In this process, too, dialogue can play a special role as a forum for the participating actors.

Long-term relations with partner institutions and the changeover from former short-term project approaches to long-term programmes based on possibilities of continuous exchange of opinion between partners, persons and institutions are an approach to sustainable development cooperation. Modern means of communication will facilitate this new quality of partner relations and hence a new quality in development cooperation. The DSE as training institution ­ in the light of the experience it has already gained and its development approach ­ has all the possibilities of participating in and decisively influencing the development of this modern communication process in cooperation with its partners and with the necessary support of the BMZ.

New opportunities for DSE
in Eastern Europe

There are also oppportunities for political participation and potentials relevant to development for an institution like the DSE in the Central and Eastern European States and in the promotion of regional cooperation on all continents; this may take the form of a contribution towards closer cooperation between the Central and East European countries and Western Europe and a contribution towards overcoming conflicts in the Balkans, as well as closer economic and political cooperation at regional level, a contribution at the same time to conflict prevention.

A continuous process of change and internal modernization is a lasting perspective which will ensure that the DSE, in competition with other institutions and in full recognition of its role as desirable partner for other institutions, is not content with the success of the past and the worldwide appreciation of the work it has performed so far. Externally too the perspectives of the DSE will be reflected in the form of organizational changes. The removal of large parts of the DSE to Bonn will lead to a greater concentration of work units in Bonn, to greater proximity to the BMZ and to a close network of development institutions, national and international, moving their headquarters to Bonn. These organizational changes will accelerate or even facilitate the above-mentioned process of change and adjustment. They will assign the DSE a special role and responsibility in reshaping German development policy, above all at the Centre for International Cooperation in Bonn which will have to define itself in the coming years and create a life for itself.

Important in this context will be not only willingness and readiness of the institutions involved to break new ground, but also the perception by the Federal Government of development policy as international structural policy and therefore as peace policy in the long term. The DSE wishes to play an active role in influencing this process on the basis of its 40 years of experience of education and dialogue in the field of development cooperation.