Digital Development Debates - 03 Development Cooperation

issue 03, March 2011

Digital Development Debates – be part of the debates!

Dear Readers, more than a billion people on this planet still live in absolute poverty. For us as an international community, this means that development policy needs to be even more successful, even more efficient. We must increase its effectiveness if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals and provide the people in our partner countries with opportunities.

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Red balloon signed with "stand up" (Durukan/UN-Millenniumkampagne)

Introduction

This time we are exploring the structures of international development cooperation, which is rapidly undergoing change. The idea of development cooperation as a set group of countries from the North who cooperate with countries in the South is long outdated.

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Flags of nations (getty/Flickr, Gary Jones)

International cooperation

Development cooperation can no longer be mastered by individual countries alone. Countries need to work together to solve global problems such as climate change and the educational gap – in international organisations, regional cooperatives and joint projects.

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Finance

What development aid can accomplish is in part a question of money. The need for aid is tremendous: The economic crisis and increasingly frequent natural disasters have also increased the need for money. One central question remains: Who is giving how much and for what?

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Anti-corruption poster, Liberia, 2004 (wikimedia commons/Geneva52)

Aid effectiveness

Aid is about making people's lives somewhat better. In theory more money should be able to help more people. In reality, however, this is not always the case. The impact of aid depends vitally on how it is implemented. Large sums of money continue to be lost due to corruption and ineffectiveness, for example.

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Chinese paper dragon in modern city (getty/amana images, DAJ)

New Donor China

China’s booming economic growth in recent years has led to the country’s increased investment in development cooperation in Africa and Latin America. But the Chinese concept of cooperation is quite different from that of the traditional donor countries from Europe and North America – and is therefore quite controversial there.

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Girl drinking from tap in township, Cape Town (getty/Gallo Images, David Malan)

Water management

Humans cannot live without water – but the availability of this natural resource is limited. Clean water is therefore an important issue for development cooperation. International efforts surrounding improving the water supply are excellent examples of the practical effects of development cooperation.

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