The BMZ in digital change

Climate change, the corona pandemic, and the war of aggression on Ukraine with its consequences for food and energy supply are clear reminders: the challenges of our time mark a turning point, also in international cooperation. Digitization can help us better manage these global crises: Pandemics can be tracked and contained through digital epidemic management systems. Digital identities and electronic money transfers enable states to provide their populations with basic services – and also to respond quickly in emergencies. Artificial intelligence can help in the fight against climate change to recognize impending droughts or extreme weather in good time and prepare for them.

Our approach is also to shape digital transformation with our partner countries in a fair and sustainable way. In this way, both sides can leverage their potential and also catch up digitally.

Around five billion people worldwide use the Internet. However, more than one-third of the world’s population remains cut off from the social and economic advances that come with digitization – women and girls are particularly affected.

German development policy advocates an international digital policy that seeks to balance interests and is underpinned by European standards. In this way, we provide a genuine alternative to the offerings of autocracies. Our guiding principle is a social-ecological digital transformation that gives our partner countries sovereignty over the most important resource of the digital age: their data.  Our offering does not lead to new dependencies but is intended to reduce existing dependencies on commercial software, for example. We, therefore, offer our partner countries solutions that benefit both sides – for example, with digital public goods.

The Network for Digital Transformation in Development Cooperation is an important step in this direction. It is the first result of the comprehensive dialog with internal, national, and international stakeholders. In this broad network between development policy, the digital economy, civil society, and academia, we will join forces in the future and together lay the foundation for a new form of digital development policy in the sign of the changing times.

I look forward to working with you and invite you to learn more about the contribution of development cooperation to the German government’s international digital policy and the actors involved.

Yours, Svenja Schulze

Focus 1: We will promote cultural change at the BMZ with our modernization agenda.

If you want to shape the digital transformation, you have to live the digital transformation. This applies to staff skills, internal processes, IT solutions and data management, as well as to FC and TC measures in the regional and sectoral departments.
That is why we are starting with our internal structures and moving forward as a transformation ministry: We want to promote agile project management, create experimental spaces and work in digital workflows. To this end, we rely on state-of-the-art technological solutions in the areas of network access, hardware and applications and network closely with the ICT industry. We support our employees with strategic change management and implement cultural and technological change at the ministry. For us, this is digital transformation at eye level.

Focus 3: We shape a social-ecological-feminist digital policy!

Our value-based approach distinguishes German (and European) digital policy from the market-driven models in the US with their negative consequences (platform economy, monopolies, poor data protection, unfair working conditions in the gig economy) and the state-centric approaches in autocracies like China and Russia with their excesses (censorship, propaganda, cyberwar). Our world is changing – towards GreenIT, eAgriculture, eCommerce, FinTech, eMobility, eGovernment, Smart Energy, Smart Cities. To gain a foothold in these new sectors requires a shift in thinking. State systems, economic systems and cultural practices that cannot rely on modern technologies operate with outdated processes and are increasingly left behind in global competition. Therefore, TC or FC that is not digital by default is inconceivable in the BMZ in the future. Almost half of the people still have no access to the Internet and are thus massively disadvantaged in their development, most of them in the global South (with additional severe discrimination against women). The BMZ therefore wants to shape the digital transformation in economic and development cooperation with our partner countries in such a way that digital divides are overcome. At the same time, we want to face the risks of digitalization. We want to actively counter social divisions caused by technological advances, autocratic or monopolistic misuse of data, and environmental and climate damage caused by resource consumption and CO2 emissions.