Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven: GIZ is a learning organisation

Evaluations help us to identify the measures and approaches as well as the sectors and conditions that have proven successful – or otherwise. Evaluations serve to create transparency and accountability vis-à-vis our clients, our partner organisations and, of course, the wider public.

The environment has become much more difficult in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, armed conflicts and wars. These crises impact and change our work and that of our partner organisations. We are countering this challenge by introducing new patterns of cooperation, including the remote management of projects from countries in the region or even from Germany. Evaluations are an important instrument for identifying relevant learning experiences and turning them into sustainable approaches for the future.

One key issue for the future is digitalisation, which also has enormous importance for international cooperation. Our objective is to fully exploit the potential of digitalisation, while taking account of the risks it entails, such as the exclusion of marginalised groups.

Having set our targets, it is now a case of driving forward the transformation to bring about a greener and more equitable future.

Most central project evaluations took place for projects in fragile states. Out of 136 evaluated projects that can be allocated bilaterally to a partner country, 40 were implemented in a state with a low level of fragility, 47 in a state with a higher level of fragility, and 49 in an acutely fragile state. This is due in part to the fact that around a quarter of the world’s population now lives in fragile states with high security and development risks. But it is also because many projects focus on peacekeeping and stability in fragile states. States whose governments are unwilling or unable to establish the rule of law and security or to provide basic services to the population are considered fragile. Other characteristics of fragile states include security-related factors – insecure political conditions, conflicts or wars, usually accompanied by human rights violations or violence.