With action items across all levels of the hierarchy — hover a dot for who does what
project
cycle
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2
3
4
5
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1 · Government Negotiations
2 · Scoping & Appraisal
3 · Project Design & Preparation
4 · Implementation & Steering
5 · Evaluation
Rings — levels of action
Political decision-making level — BMZ, AA
Within implementing organisations
(GIZ, KfW, foundations & NGOs):
Higher Management
Institutional Senior — senior staff
Operational / Working Level Staff
Reading a recommendation
• one spindle = one recommendation across levels
• node SIZE = how substantive the action is there
• dark-outlined node + number = where it is led
The recommendations
1 Reshape government negotiations 2 Strategic co-conception 3 Consistent staff terms 4 Preparation on both sides 5 Diaspora integration 6 Designated time & evaluable role 7 Progression & protected reporting 8 Bilingual communication 9 Peer support & representation 10 Open & learning-oriented evaluation
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1 · Reshape government negotiations Political decision-making level — the lead leads here The BMZ and the Federal Foreign Office (AA), as institutions
Reshape the negotiations to be two-way by design; resolve the specific coordination breakdown the interviews document — in one recent round the talks were led by the BMZ while the partner delegation's visas were handled separately by the Federal Foreign Office, the two processes worked against each other, and a partner minister broke off the process (interview 11); develop the BMZ's negotiating posture in step with the Federal Foreign Office's own emphasis on explicit interests — building on the interministerial coordination (Ressortabstimmung ) that already exists — so that development cooperation comes to the table as a clear, well-prepared counterpart; resource the partner side's preparation rather than assuming it; and mandate the country-by-country renegotiation of the framework and TZ-Abkommen layer (a political act involving the BMZ, the AA and partner governments). Grounded in: the visa-coordination failure and the accounts of negotiations that are "scripted," "top-down" and "dictated from Berlin" (interviews 11, 15), and the description of agreements carrying "at least forty years of tradition," in which "the document … is already colonial" (interview 12). This is the core lever: the negotiations are where donor steering of partner policy concentrates, so the decisive action is political.
Higher Management — a substantive, co-equal role The boards and headquarters of the implementing organisations (GIZ, KfW, the political foundations), and their country directors
Reform the consultation templates and the framework-contract layer (the Rahmenvertrag ) that these organisations administer; commission translation of the framework agreements into partners' working languages; and ask country directors to prepare each consultation as a genuine two-way exchange — convening joint preparatory meetings with partner ministries and shaping the agenda with the partner, not for them. Grounded in: the unchanged 1967 framework and the 1960s–70s technical-cooperation treaties, often unavailable in the partner's language (interviews 12, 15), and the country director's pivotal latitude over how a consultation is actually run. (Country directors belong here, with Higher Management, not at the senior-staff tier below.)
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Shape the substance of consultations through well-prepared input and informal channels; use language that does not talk down to the partner ("from on high" — von oben herab ); actively look for moments of shared problem-naming, where a difficulty is framed as common to both sides ("we have a big problem with that in Germany too … it is a shared concern" — da haben wir in Deutschland auch ein großes Problem … es ist ein gemeinsames Anliegen ); and put partner-side capacity constraints in writing so they inform the preparation. Grounded in: the constructive-practice accounts (interview 12) and the view that partners must be structurally enabled to act on their own interests ("you have to stand up for yourself, otherwise no one will stand up for you" — man muss auch für sich gerade stehen, sonst wird keiner für dich stehen , interview 15).
Operational / Working-level — documentary Working-level staff, described by function
Document the costs of consultation failures — partner ministers dropping out, untranslated agreements, the gap between the script and the room — and route them upward, assembling the evidence base the redesign needs. Grounded in: the episodes practitioners describe (interviews 11, 12, 15).
2 · Progression & protected reporting Political decision-making level — no role here Grading, clearance, evaluation and reporting infrastructure are human-resources matters of each organisation; the BMZ cannot reach into them. This node is deliberately empty.
Higher Management — the lead leads here The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations
Redesign clearance and grading so authority follows formal rank; revise the progression and evaluation instruments; build the shared definition of racist conduct and extend the whistleblower/sexual-misconduct channel to racism, with anonymity protection; and strengthen national-staff representation (contract security for elected representatives, and genuine involvement in the decisions and information that concern them). Grounded in: the signing-authority asymmetry (interview 02); the attrition of staff who "are good at their work" (interview 13); the dismissive "too much Afrika" register tied to a deficit view of national staff (interview 15); and the constrained representation forums (interviews 05, 09, 17, 02). This HR redesign is the core act.
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Audit the signing/clearance flows in their own offices and publish what they find; refuse the deficit register ("exaggerates," "not exemplary") in the performance feedback they write; and recognise the informal mentoring that already happens.
Operational / Working-level — documentary Working-level staff, described by function
Document the patterns through the existing representation forums; and senior national staff take on the informal mentoring that the companion peer-support recommendation would formalise.
3 · Bilingual communication Political decision-making level — a supporting but real role The development ministry (BMZ) and the Federal Foreign Office (AA)
Make language competence relevant to the partner context a requirement for report-receiving staff; endorse document-language norms that include partners' working languages; and specify the narrow set of texts where German is legally required. The ministry-side competence requirement is genuine leverage, because part of why reporting stays double-language is the receiving end.
Higher Management — the lead leads here The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations
Resource translation as an institutional workflow step rather than voluntary effort on top of a workload; issue a leadership directive (from the departmental leadership or executive board) that partner-language fluency is a hiring requirement where operationally necessary — applying to consultants too; and renegotiate and translate the bilateral framework agreements (the TZ-Abkommen ) into partners' working languages. Grounded in: the explicit "directive from above" proposal and the framework-agreements-in-German problem (interview 15). The institutional cost-transfer is the core act; lead.
Institutional Senior — co-equal, because it can neutralise the default Senior in-country managers below director level
Institute bilingual reporting and conception within their projects now — this is the tier that can actually neutralise the default, as the variance in the corpus shows: where management already does it, the ceiling lifts. Document the personal translation burden carried by bilingual staff and route the case upward. Grounded in: the project-level variance where a good run of managers already runs bilingual reporting (interview 01 — exact passage to confirm); the diaspora adviser's account of voluntary translation work (interview 17).
Operational / Working-level — documentation Working-level staff, described by function — the level where the documents are used, not designed
Bilingual staff document the translation work they currently carry; staff who do not work in German document the exclusion from information — the pattern where a German-only document with "important information in it" is shared without comment and "half of the people cannot read it" (interview 17).
4 · Consistent staff terms Political decision-making level — no role here Staff terms and human resources sit entirely with each implementing organisation; the BMZ cannot reach into them. This node is deliberately empty — and saying so plainly matters, so the recommendation reaches the right addressee.
Higher Management — the lead leads here The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations
Stop citing whichever legal framework lowers the cost; align the points that discretion allows (annual leave, maternity and parental protection); and reform the benchmarking protocol so the comparator organisations are chosen transparently, the methodology is published, and the result is applied to staff terms rather than selectively quoted. Grounded in: the account of "a selective reference … when it suits them" used to justify lower pay (interview 03), and national-staff representatives' description of a benchmark whose comparator sample was assembled to flatter — "they go for those organisations that favour them" (interview 09). This human-resources redesign is the core act.
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Document specific instances of selective application and the composition of benchmark samples; and ask, in writing, for a reasoned justification whenever one framework is cited in one direction but not the other.
Operational / Working-level — documentary Working-level staff, described by function
Document the pattern through the existing staff-representation forums and route it upward.
5 · Designated time & evaluable role Political decision-making level — no role here Evaluation criteria and job design are human-resources matters of each organisation; the BMZ cannot dictate them. This node is deliberately empty.
Higher Management — a substantive design role The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations
Issue the mandate from above (the Auftrag von oben ); make addressing colonial continuities a yearly goal in the annual-planning cycle; revise the relevant job descriptions and evaluation criteria to include it; reform the upward-feedback instrument; and specify who designs and evaluates the work. Substantive — but not where the work is carried.
Institutional Senior — the lead leads here Senior in-country professionals below director level
This is where the designated, evaluable practice actually lives: senior staff carve out and model the engagement work, push back on outdated template language, sustain the cohort-organising, and document the disincentive pattern in the upward-feedback instrument so that headquarters can fix it. Grounded in: the "mandate from above" proposal and the feedback-instrument account (interview 12); the voluntary, on-the-side initiative pattern (interviews 18, 17). The work is carried here; lead.
Operational / Working-level — recognition and documentation Working-level staff, described by function
Have the informal cohort work recognised as legitimate organisational practice, and document the steady tax of extra effort it carries (interview 17).
6 · Preparation on both sides Political decision-making level — no role here Curriculum and induction design sit with the implementing organisations and their academy; the BMZ does not run them. This node is deliberately empty.
Higher Management — the lead leads here The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations, and the Academy for International Cooperation (AIZ)
Make a module on colonial continuities compulsory and recurring — at the same standard already applied to compliance and data-security training — and deliver it inside the existing AIZ pre-departure block, so a line manager's rationing of work time cannot defeat it; build the parallel induction for national staff; specify who designs and evaluates the module; and raise trainer quality where it is weak. Grounded in: the account that the AIZ's post-colonial modules are strong "but … not mandatory whatsoever," set against the recurring compulsory compliance and data-security training (interview 02), and the partner-side endorsement of a historical grounding so that one knows "what kind of institutions you are entering into" (interview 08). Designing and mandating the curriculum is the core act.
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Run pilot pre-deployment seminars and parallel local-staff preparation at office level; and document the gap — a country briefing for outgoing staff, nothing comparable for incoming national staff (interview 17) — and route the case upward.
Operational / Working-level — documentary Working-level staff, described by function
National and German staff document their own preparation gaps and submit them for an institutional response.
7 · Peer support & representation Political decision-making level — endorsement and cover The BMZ
Endorse peer-support spaces and staff networks as legitimate organisational practice with real benefits for retention and effectiveness; give them political cover so that, where staff-run diversity initiatives draw external political pressure, they meet an institutional commitment rather than an exposed individual. Grounded in: the general pattern (interview 18, de-identified) that such an initiative survived external political pressure only by securing leadership backing — with a documentable instance on the public record, independent of the interview (the AfD's Kleine Anfrage on a federal staff network, BT-Drs. 19/20093, 2020). Register: keep any reference to that pressure factual, on the public record, and at the level of the initiative — not personalised or partisan.
Higher Management — standing, resourcing, protection The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations
Designate time and standing for the spaces; resource them; integrate the mentoring layer with the existing representation forum; and protect participants and elected representatives on fixed-term contracts, so that representing colleagues or raising a concern does not put a contract renewal at risk.
Institutional Senior — instituting and mentoring Senior in-country professionals below director level
Institute the practice within their offices now; recognise existing informal local-staff peer groupings as legitimate; take on the senior-to-new mentoring role; and surface where contract precarity is silencing representatives so headquarters can address it.
Operational / Working-level — the lead leads here Working-level national staff
The spaces originate and live here: local staff organise the cohorts themselves, and the elected representation forum is theirs. Grounded in: the cohort space that lets staff "share experiences … so you don't feel alone" (interview 17); the grassroots founding of the Cultural Diversity Initiative by staff themselves (interview 15); and the bottom-up, volunteer origin of staff diversity initiatives more broadly (interview 18). This is the bottom-up case: management and the political level grant standing and protection, but the practice originates and lives here; lead.
8 · Strategic co-conception Political decision-making level — a supporting role The BMZ and the Federal Foreign Office (AA)
Endorse norms that make strategic documents accessible to partner-country teams; set the expectation, at BMZ level, that strategy formation includes consultation with the partner country; and keep this in step with the Federal Foreign Office's own emphasis on interests, so the message reaching partners is consistent. This is endorsement and expectation-setting — important support, but not the core act.
Higher Management — the lead leads here The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations, including country directors
Reform how strategy documents are shared, so national staff can see the reasoning; build national-staff consultation into concept development and into the annual steering committees and operational planning; adopt the peer agency's inclusive practice as a required step in the workflow; and ask country directors to share the programme-level strategic logic with their teams. Grounded in: the contrast practitioners draw with a peer European agency, where the national professional receives the full strategic picture in advance and can shape a programme as it is designed — against the German experience of work "dictated from Berlin" and entered "with no context" (interviews 08, 15). This is where the lever sits.
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Within their own projects, bring national colleagues into the strategy-shaping conversations and pass on the reasoning they do have, so colleagues can engage partner ministries with it rather than be caught without it; where the reasoning sits further upstream, flag the gap so it can be closed. Grounded in: national staff who, at the ministry interface, were asked questions they could not answer because the strategic reasoning had not reached them (interview 02).
Operational / Working-level — documentary Working-level staff, described by function
Request access to strategic documents and to the moments where strategy is discussed, and document the pattern whereby such documents reach national staff only when it happens to suit management, rather than as a matter of course (interview 17), to build the case upward.
9 · Diaspora integration Political decision-making level — the lead leads here The BMZ and senior leadership, as institutions
Revise the TZ-FZ-Leitlinie deployment definition so dual-nationals and diaspora practitioners are not routed out of posted roles; create the politically empowered diaspora consultative body (the FORIM model) and bring diaspora consultation into strategic foreign-policy design; and consolidate the lessons of existing diaspora programmes (MEG; WIDU) beyond their project lifespan. Grounded in: the recruitment accounts in which colleagues are asked to give up a partner-country citizenship, and the posted role is treated as one for someone who "has to be blond and blue-eyed" (interview 15). The deployment definition and the consultative body are political acts; lead.
Higher Management — a substantive, co-equal role The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations, including country directors
Reform funding access by easing the registered-association (e.V. ) and Westernised-structure requirements; reframe partnership so diaspora-led organisations are strategic partners rather than implementation contractors; and give standing to the existing informal headquarters networks of staff who have moved from national to international roles.
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Position diaspora practitioners as strategic partners now, and bring diaspora-led organisations into country-level programme design as commissioning partners.
Operational / Working-level — more than documentary Working-level staff, described by function
Diaspora staff already inside the institution document the asymmetric-expertise pattern, contribute to self-selected cohort work, and record the informal mechanisms the recommendation would formalise — and they are also the population the recommendation would integrate, which is why their role here weighs more than documentation alone.
10 · Open & learning-oriented evaluation Political decision-making level — a supporting role The BMZ and the wider OECD-DAC venue
Advance the decolonial reform of the international evaluation criteria; resist the way the added "coherence" criterion reinforces established structures; and endorse norms under which partners help define what is evaluated. This is higher-policy support, not the core act — the criteria are set internationally.
Higher Management — the lead leads here The headquarters and boards of the implementing organisations
Decide who evaluates: mandate mixed/tandem teams with national co-evaluators and a pathway to partner-led evaluation backed by training; require partner co-definition of the evaluation questions; adopt decolonial criteria alongside the DAC set; reframe the purpose toward learning and reciprocal accountability; and mainstream the complaint and feedback mechanisms so they are known and used. Grounded in: the institutional variance — church-based organisations already co-develop questions with partners, work in national-evaluator tandems, and even delegate evaluation budgets to partners with training provided, whereas the state organisation's recent practice was "top-down, deutsch" (interview 19) — and the reframe of "capacity" from "they don't know evaluation" to "our bureaucracy is arcane and has to be learned" (interview 19). This is the core act.
Institutional Senior — proactive support Senior in-country professionals below director level
Closer to partners and with more authority to mediate, they can license critical questions and run the tandem at project level. Grounded in: the seniors' proximity to partners (interview 19).
Operational / Working-level — more than documentary Working-level staff, described by function
Apply the counterpart principle — national staff and junior colleagues speaking with their counterparts and with the target group, so people can speak freely across steep local hierarchies — and surface what the praise-oriented reports leave out. Grounded in: the counterpart principle and the observation that critical points "kommen nicht vor" in reports that must "die Erfolge zeigen, um wieder Gelder zu kriegen" (interview 19); corroborated by the report-gaming account in interview 08.
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