Signal before G8: Federal government announces increase in German development aid
As anticipated the German government announced before the G-8 summit was convened that it would significantly increase its development aid. As (nearly) all papers reported, development aid is to be increased by EUR 750 million each year until 2011. This is intended as fulfilment of its 2005 commitment to increase the German ODA quota from its current 0.36% to 0.51%. The federal government will finance this in part by means of so-called innovative financial instruments, e.g. auctioned CO2 emission rights Chancellor Merkel proposed. The latter is expected to generate EUR 350 million.
The announcements by Chancellor Merkel in Bild and by overseas development minister Wieczorek-Zeul to the Süddeutschen Zeitung are the first specific figures after a long series of generally similar declarations. To that extent it is the first substantive indication since the 2005 Gleneagles summit after it had appeared that the German government remained far behind on its promises. With the significant quantitative top-up of development aid, the need for qualitative improvement and reform becomes more obvious.
As praiseworthy as the German initiative certainly is, it is just as uncertain or even unlikely that the hoped for signal effect will occur and the other G-8 partners inspired to similar announcements at the Heiligendamm summit. Only this would really give the lie to the thesis of the "G-8's broken promises". It is clear that the new German ODA initiative does not diminish the other criticisms of German G-8 policy, primarily substantive in nature: unwillingness to accept reform of the summit structure, overemphasis on the private sector in Africa policy, The one-sided attitude toward innovation and investment protection of the North and the general habit of the G-8 to preach a lot but to do little to clean its own stables. For a critical analysis of the German G-8 policy from this perspective, see the recent article by Rainer Falk and Barbara Unmüßig (>>> German G8 Politics on the Eve of Heiligendamm).
