Seminar Looks at German Strategic Engagement for Creating a Network with Emerging Countries

On October 3, 2017, the JICA Research Institute held an open seminar on "German Strategic Engagement for Creating Network with Emerging Countries: Learning from Experiences of Managing Global Governance (MGG)."

Germany offers the MGG training program under a government initiative, which is implemented by German Development Institute (DIE), an independent public-sector think tank that belongs to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The program is attracting attention as a successful example of development cooperation between developed and emerging countries. The main speakers at this seminar were Thomas Fues, Head of department, DIE, who has led the program, and Li Xiaoyun, Professor and former dean of College of Humanities and Development at China Agricultural University, one of the principal members of this program in China.

Next, Fues made his keynote speech, giving a brief overview of MGG and its experiences. In MGG, around 20 young professionals from government and think tanks are invited at a time from six countries (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa) and Europe. They stay in Germany for about four months to develop their capacity in areas such as the global aid architecture, role of the public sector in implementing the SDGs, contributions of the G20 to the global governance and its partnership with Africa, and so on. Fues said the program aims for "joint knowledge creation," that is, the participants discuss among themselves how to solve issues faced by emerging countries and shape a global agenda that contributes to the development of the global community. Moreover, the program emphasizes "multi-stakeholder dialogue" because mutual understanding between members with different interests is an essential component in social transformation. They put effort into collaboration between diverse actors such as government, international organizations, corporations and general society, and enhanced collaboration with the alumni network.

After this speech, Li made some comments. He said we must focus not on our own national development but on global development, or on tackling common challenges like environmental issues and many other issues. In this context, he emphasized that MGG plays a unique and valuable role in that it can bring transformative change to the current global society.

After the speeches, attendants raised various questions, ranging from the strengths of the MGG program to dealing with conflicts of interests between concerned countries in the course of building global governance. The questions sparked lively discussions.

The seminar ended with closing words from Nobuko Kayashima, Deputy Director of JICA Research Institute. She pointed out the success of MGG has been found in combining capacity building with joint knowledge creation, and expressed her hopes to incorporate lessons learned from MGG into JICA's capacity building aid.