Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

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Markus Loewe
German DC should take this state of affairs well into account. In both geographic
and sectoral terms it is oriented in such a way as to be able to provide
support, in key places, for efforts to implement the MDGs in the region.
Nevertheless. it remains unclear what contribution it is in fact providing.
One reason for this is that German DC does not adequately document
what impacts it has (or is intending to have) on the MDGs. The other
reason is that neither the German side nor the MENA countries have ever
thoroughly analyzed their cooperation and its impacts on the MDGs.
The German government has signed the Millennium Declaration, and it
acknowledges that “the MDGs are binding goals, though not comprehensive
terms of reference, for the whole of development cooperation. They
indicate what is to be accomplished, although they leave open how these
goals are to be realized” (Bundesregierung 2004, 5). This is certainly correct.
In addition, there is no reason why the whole of DC should have to be
subordinated to the MDG agenda. But every donor should be able to state
that he is at least providing a relevant and significant contribution to reaching
the MDGs in his partner countries (BMZ 2005a).
It is getting to be time for German DC to live up to this statement. We can
therefore derive the following recommendations for future German DC
with the countries of the Middle East and North Africa:
6.1 Regional orientation of bilateral German DC
Generally speaking, it is important to ensure that the limited resources of
DC in such a way that they achieve the maximum possible impacts. This
will usually be the case in countries and sectors where the urgency to solve
the existing problems is high and the partner country’s capacities are limited,
i.e. where DC can make a good contribution to overcoming bottlenecks.
It is furthermore important to be sure that a partner government has
a certain disposition to solve the problems of the country, since DC is not
likely to achieve much – or its effects may prove highly vulnerable – if the
relevant decision-makers in a partner country are not seriously interested
in reaching the goals set by DC.
Seen against the background of the MDGs, it is not immediately evident
why Egypt and Morocco should be priority partner countries of German
DC while e.g. Jordan does not have this status. All three countries are
German Development Institute