The network

Building trust, learning from each other, acting internationally

Our network is open and dynamic. Network partners are performance drivers from politics, administration, science, the private sector and civil society in Germany and the partner countries. It consists of active and former policy makers and administrative staff and high-level experts with practical experience. The establishment of new and the use of existing administrative partnerships at the level of the federal government, the German federal states and local governments is a central component of the Governance Fund .  

The increased cooperation between service providers and decision-makers from Germany and the partner countries strengthens the latter in their ability to develop and implement reform concepts in the partner countries. Support and advice in reform processes is provided by the use of the German network partners as short-term experts on location, various education and training measures in Germany and through administrative partnerships. Through the exchange, German network partners receive valuable insights into international cooperation and reform processes in other countries, gain international experience and reflect on their own organisations and processes by contributing their personal experience in implementing reforms and change processes here in Germany in other countries.

The selection of implementation partners in Germany takes the following criteria into account:

• Experience with Germany’s structural and regulatory approaches in the areas of decentralisation and local self-government, promotion of political participation and domestic accountability, public financial management and economic policy and other areas in which service providers from partner countries of German development cooperation have explicit interest for shaping their own reform;
• Willingness to embrace the unfamiliar and foreign
• Appropriate language skills
• The general willingness at management level to get involved in development cooperation/international cooperation and to actively participate in, and help shape, exchanges and consultation formats (for example, through staff exemptions).

The selection of partners in the partner countries takes into account the following elements:

• Participation in shaping reform and transformation processes in these countries;
• Explicit interest in a specific German systemic achievement (e.g. decentralisation) and in cooperation with Germany;
• Willingness to actively participate in, and help shape, exchanges and consultation formats (for example, through staff exemptions).

Through a series of joint conferences, workshops and working sessions, the identified knowledge holders from politics and administration, science and research, the private sector, media and civil society from Germany are brought together with their counterparts from partner countries and experts from German development cooperation. Through these exchange formats, knowledge transfer, mutual learning, but also a sensitisation of players and organisations in Germany as well as the German public for "development cooperation Made in Germany" take place. We work continuously and closely with bilateral German development cooperation programmes.

All consultations financed by the Governance Fund take place at the request of the partners on location within bilateral projects and enrich these with the specific German experience. Building on the short-term assignments of German experts financed by the Fund, the bilateral projects will continue to provide specialist and strategic advice to decision-makers from individual national institutions in the development and implementation of reform agendas. They take up the advisory measures and advise on the long-term implementation, in some cases using intermittent interventions financed from the Fund. The project in turn thus works on results and developments and documents them.

Through networking and communication, we strengthen trust between the players involved, both within a partner country and between the partner country and German institutions. Through study trips, seminars in Germany and in the respective partner country as well as in the context of dialogue forums, readiness for reform is developed, cooperations are promoted and at the same time competencies in the public institutions are developed further.