Publications

Given the financial strength and cross-sectoral, welfare-promoting powers of private sector actors, it is not surprising that state development cooperation is paying more and more attention to cooperation with the private sector - be it with the financial sector, with the manufacturing industry investing in the global South or with companies engaged in foreign trade. However, private sector actors have their own perspectives on their investments in the global South and different priority goals than governmental development cooperation; unlike the latter, they are not primarily oriented towards collective interests. It is therefore all the more important to systematically analyze when and to what extent cooperation with the private sector can be successful from a development policy perspective and which hurdles need to be overcome.

• zu Eulenburg, A.; M. Orth-Rempel; C. Römling; M. Wittenberg (2024), Different perspectives –
  joint success? Private sector engagement in development cooperation, Focus report,
  German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), Bonn.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges for countries worldwide and had serious health and socio-economic consequences. In Germany, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) provided 4.8 billion euros in funding between April 2020 and December 2021 to finance the Emergency COVID-19 Support Programme (CSP).  This programme was aimed at supporting efforts to contain and mitigate the pandemic and its socio-economic consequences in partner countries of German development cooperation. The German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval) conducted an evaluation of the CSP from December 2021 to March 2024 and assessed the programme's relevance, coherence, effectiveness and efficiency.  This policy brief presents key findings and recommendations from the evaluation report.

• Schnell, J., C. Römling, W. Stein, S. Disse and A.G. zu Eulenburg (2025), The BMZ Emergency Covid-19 Support Programme: Success factors and potential improvements for future crisis response programmes, DEval Policy Brief 4/2025, German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), Bonn.

The present evaluation report examines the interventions of German bilateral development cooperation in protected areas. There are two overarching goals for BMZ’s support for protected areas: conserving global biodiversity and securing sustainable incomes for the local population. This support must therefore navigate tensions arising between protection and use interests and strive to align them. The current DEval evaluation rates the relevance, effectiveness, coherence, and sustainability of the German development cooperation and illustrates patterns, practices, and challenges for the criteria impact and efficiency. Based on data from nine representative partner countries, this evaluation report provides conclusions and recommendations for future support for protected areas.

• Executive Summary (PDF, 630 KB)  Accessible
• Online Annex (available only in German) (PDF, 3.29 MB)
• BMZ Response

• Sting, A., K. Lücking, M. Heinelt, C. Wicke and A. Dausendschön (2024), BMZ`s Support for Protected Areas. Evaluation Report, German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), Bonn

Das Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung steht bei der Steuerung und Ausgestaltung der bilateralen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit mit seinen Partnerländern vor großen Herausforderungen, die durch teils drastische Kürzungen der öffentlichen Entwicklungsleistungen in anderen Ländern sowie die Schwächung multilateraler Institutionen weiter zunehmen. Die strategische und zukunftsfähige Ausgestaltung der bilateralen deutschen EZ ist daher von großer Bedeutung. Die DEval-Evaluierung zur strategischen Portfoliosteuerung in der bilateralen deutschen EZ hat untersucht, inwieweit es dem BMZ gelingt, seine Länderportfolios im Geflecht der unterschiedlichen Ansprüche strategisch auszurichten und zu steuern.  Die Ergebnisse und Empfehlungen dieser Evaluierung werden in diesem Policy Brief zusammengefasst und analysiert. 

• Köder, M. und K. Vorwerk (2025), Balance zwischen vielfältigen Ansprüchen: Strategische Portfoliosteuerung und Fachkompetenz für eine wirksame Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, DEval Policy Brief 5/2025, Deutsches Evaluierungsinstitut der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (DEval), Bonn.

Governmental and nongovernmental organizations have increasingly relied on early-warning systems of conflict to support their decisionmaking. Predictions of war intensity as probability distributions prove closer to what policymakers need than point estimates, as they encompass useful representations of both the most likely outcome and the lower-probability risk that conflicts escalate catastrophically. Point-estimate predictions, by contrast, fail to represent the inherent uncertainty in the distribution of conflict fatalities. Yet, current early warning systems are preponderantly focused on providing point estimates, while efforts to forecast conflict fatalities as a probability distribution remain sparse. This article introduces the goal and motivation behind the prediction challenge, presents a set of evaluation metrics to assess the performance of the forecasting models, describes the benchmark models which the contributions are evaluated against, and summarizes the salient features of the submitted contributions.

• Sage Journals: Journal of Peace Research

• Hegre, H., P. Vesco, M. Colaresi, J. Vestby, A. Timlick, N. S. Kazmi, A. Lindqvist-McGowan, F. Becker, M. Binetti, T. Bodentien, T. Bohne, P. T. Brandt, T. Chadefaux, S. Drauz, C. Dworschak, V. D’Orazio, H. Frank, C. Fritz, K. S. Gleditsch, … and J. Walterskirchen (2025), The 2023/24 VIEWS Prediction challenge: Predicting the number of fatalities in armed conflict, with uncertainty. Journal of Peace Research, 62(6), 2070-2087.

In 2015, the international community set itself ambitious targets for climate change mitigation in the 2030 Agenda, its Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement. The most important of these targets is limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2 °C and, if possible, below 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial times. The German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval) has examined the relevance, effectiveness and impact of mitigation-relevant Development Cooperation by the German Federal Ministry (BMZ) and the donor community of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as identified the prerequisites for evaluating its efficiency. This policy brief presents key findings and recommendations of this evaluation study.

• Wencker T. and K. Moull (2025), Climate Change Mitigation through Development Cooperation: Level, distribution, effectiveness and impact of climate policy interventions, DEval Policy Brief 2/2025, German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), Bonn.