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

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Markus Loewe
– dealing explicitly with the state of the MDG process in given partner
countries;
– documenting the MDGs to which German DC aims to contribute and
in fact contributes;
– explaining why German DC aims to support the implementation of
precisely these MDGs;
– consistently derive the approach and the measures of German DC
from its stated goals;
– outline in detail and in understandable language the anticipated causal
nexus between the measures it supports and the goals it seeks to implement;
– explain why German engagement in the measures it supports is reasonable
and meaningful, i.e. (i) that they help to bridge a crucial capacity
bottleneck in the partner country and (ii) that German DC is in
possession of comparative strengths vis-à-vis other donors; and
– deal more transparently and assertively with goals outside the MDG
agenda: admit frankly that some German DC measures may have no
immediate relevance to the MDGs and yet be meaningful in view of
the overall situation in a given partner country.
It would furthermore be important to review regularly whether and to what
extent the measures supported by German DC in fact generate the expected
effects. The problem here is that the impact-analyses presently used
in German DC are not well suited to the purpose. They measure only the
effects of individual projects and in part trace impact chains back only to
the level of immediate outcomes. It is therefore necessary either to further
develop the instruments presently in use to the point where they are also
able to measure impacts at the MDG level or to create new instruments. A
BMZ working group, which includes representatives of the German implementing
agencies, is already working on a solution to this problem.
6.6 Contribution to multilateral DC
Like bilateral German DC, multilateral DC also has to take account of the
MDG agenda. Germany is one of the major contributors to many international
organizations, a fact that permits it to exert considerable influence
on their development work. Even though this possibility entails substantial
German Development Institute