Svenja Schulze (SPD) is considered to be one of the winners of the federal election. After all, the 53-year-old, together with Christine Lambrecht (SPD), is one of only two ministers who are allowed to sit at the old and the new cabinet table.
To do this, Schulze switched from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Development. Your budget should multiply with the rotation. But Schulze is faced with a number of fundamental development policy issues at the BMZ, the solution of which will be of great importance not only for the countries concerned.
While the global vaccination rate against Sars-Cov2 in December was just under 43 percent according to the European External Action Service (EAD) and many people in Europe are waiting for their third dose, in Africa only about seven percent of the population were vaccinated. In order to distribute immune protection against the coronavirus more equitably around the world, the World Health Organization launched the Covax initiative in April 2020. The idea: rich countries should donate their vaccination doses to poor countries.
But recently it became clear that the WHO target for 2021 was clearly missed: of the targeted two billion doses, not even half of just under 910 million were delivered last year. Schulze therefore promised on the German side a donation of 75 million vaccine doses to the Covax program for 2022.
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But in addition to the missing doses, another hurdle for global vaccination protection is probably the logistics, because due to the lack of infrastructure and inadequate health systems in many African countries, even donated vaccines do not always make it into the upper arms of the population. In this area, Covax needs even more support, demanded Schulze.
Since the virus variants Delta and Omikron at the latest, it has been clear that global vaccination protection is not a pure act of charity. Because the more people become infected with the virus without protection, the greater the likelihood of a dangerous mutation – which will then also reach Germany with a little delay.
Dealing with the Taliban
The second big challenge for Svenja Schulze during her term of office will probably be the relationship with Afghanistan, where the radical Islamist Taliban took over the leadership in August 2021. Since then, the BMZ has suspended all development aid to the country in the Hindu Kush – in order to cut off the Taliban’s cash flows.
But at the same time the population suffers. According to the United Nations World Food Program, nearly nine million Afghans are at risk of famine.
Although the EU began to drop medical devices by plane over Afghanistan in October, the Commission ruled out a resumption of regular development aid. This should only be resumed when the Taliban recognize fundamental rights such as women’s rights and freedom of the press.
The question of how the Afghan people can receive humanitarian and developmental support without co-financing the Taliban is therefore becoming a central challenge for Svenja Schulze.
With this question, too, the BMZ is acting in the German self-interest. The UN Refugee Commissioner Filippo Grandi had warned that human rights violations and famine could induce many Afghans to flee abroad – initially to neighboring Iran and Pakistan, and finally to Europe.
Cooperation with African heads of state
In other, especially African, countries, too, Schulze will have to ask himself the question of future partnerships. The past shows that Germany and its development partners have often been blinded by supposedly “reform-minded” heads of state – who later turned out to be violent and repressive.
Example Ethiopia: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for political rapprochement with neighboring Eritrea. In addition, his country received the most official development aid after Syria with almost 3.9 billion euros worldwide.
But since the civil war that broke out in the northern region of Tigray in November 2020 at the latest, the international community has been extremely skeptical of Ahmed. He is accused of taking extreme harshness against his own population. According to BMZ estimates, 5.2 million people in the region are now dependent on humanitarian aid.
For a long time, Ethiopia was also considered a model country in German development cooperation, which received special funding as part of the “Compact for Africa” project. The aim is to “improve the conditions for private investment and employment opportunities”. The partner countries include eleven other African countries. Including Rwanda, which is developing well economically, but in which head of state Paul Kagame is taking repressive action against its own population.
If Schulze wants to achieve the goal of improving private investments on the African continent during her term of office, she will have to ask herself the fundamental question of what makes a trustworthy partner.
More: Researchers at the Bundeswehr University: “We fed a corrupt class in Afghanistan”