Evaluation in German development cooperation

In Germany, development cooperation is the policy field with the longest tradition in evaluation. All major German organisations in development cooperation use the instrument of evaluation – however, to different degrees with regard to qualitative and quantitative aspects. This study on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) methodically analyses the way the different organisations evaluate, how much they know about the impact of their projects and programmes, and if or how their evaluation systems can be integrated into a larger whole. Until now, there has been no comparable analysis, neither in other German policy fields nor in development cooperation of other European countries.