24.06.2024
The triple impact of international cooperation
2023 in figures: business volume at around EUR 4 billion. More than 25,000 staff in around 120 countries.
International cooperation achieves a hat-trick of results – with the European Football Championship under way in Germany, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, Chair of the Management Board of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, deliberately chose a sports theme to highlight the relevance of development cooperation. Schäfer-Gümbel: ‘Instead of goals in the net, our hat-trick is about sustainable results. First, GIZ achieves results in the partner countries for every individual person that it supports. Second, it achieves results in around 120 countries, by creating prospects and more stable conditions. Third, the results that GIZ achieves around the world have a medium and long-term impact in Germany.’
Jochen Flasbarth, Chair of the GIZ Supervisory Board and State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), describes development cooperation as ‘the key to a stable, peaceful and sustainable world’. Flasbarth: ‘Global crises – particularly the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss in addition to pandemics and violent conflicts – affect us all. Tackling these crises therefore requires joint solutions, which we need to approach in a spirit of partnership.’ Flasbarth stressed that GIZ’s work makes a substantial contribution to ‘actively shaping these joint solution partnerships. Experts at GIZ try to understand the perspectives of people at the local level and, at the same time, take a stand for values that apply to all human beings,’ he said.
Green hydrogen from Africa
Schäfer-Gümbel highlighted Africa to emphasise the importance of partnerships, stable conditions and prospects. Africa’s population is growing and with it the demand for energy. GIZ is providing support to develop its renewable energy sector. This benefits Africa’s population and its economy. At the same time, renewable energy contributes to mitigating climate change.
Strong partners and international cooperation also open up opportunities for German businesses because Germany is dependent on imports to meet its energy needs. In Namibia and in other countries such as Morocco, GIZ is working to create a robust environment for trade in green hydrogen. By 2035, some African countries could be in a position to supply Europe with green hydrogen generated from renewables.
GIZ’s work achieves results: in 2023, GIZ and its partners worldwide supported more than 2.2 million people in overcoming hunger and malnutrition and assisted 6.4 million people in adapting to the impacts of climate change. Access to a modern energy supply was facilitated or improved for 9.3 million people.
In 2023, GIZ’s business volume was EUR 3.96 billion. With commissions worth EUR 3.27 billion, its main commissioning party was BMZ. Last year, 25,634 people from 152 different countries worked for GIZ. Two thirds of them are national staff (17,098) in the approximately 120 countries in which GIZ operates.
You can find the Integrated Company Report 2023, which contains these facts and figures and more, at https://berichterstattung.giz.de (German version only, English version available in August)