Germany

Where it is on record

Aid is drawn at each country's interior point, sized by seven years of commitments; the CRS carries no coordinates, so a country point is the honest place. BMZ's projects are a triangle at the same point, sized by the euros the ministry has committed there since 1990: BMZ places every project at the capital, so a country is as precise as its files get. Power units with a German owner sit at Global Energy Monitor's coordinates in the map's status colours. Debt owed to Germany is off until switched on.

The main map's development-finance layer draws BMZ's 1,615 infrastructure projects one by one, inverted triangles at the country's centre, with a button each for GIZ, KfW and the other channels under Germany in its rail.

The ministry's own records: GIZ, KfW and the rest

The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) publishes every project it pays for to IATI, one file per partner country and per region, and names in each the agency that carries it out. The site reads the 53 African files: 10,384 projects, EUR 56.0 bn committed since 1990, 74% of it paid out; 2,448 are running now. By money energy comes first, EUR 7.8 bn, then government, civil society and peace, EUR 7.6 bn. Morocco has received the most, EUR 4.9 bn over 175 projects, then Egypt and Ethiopia; DR Congo has the most running now, 123.

Three channels carry the money. KfW, the development bank, does financial cooperation, the loans and grants that pay for plants, networks and credit lines: 1,722 projects, EUR 29.7 bn, 779 running. GIZ, the federal agency for international cooperation, does technical cooperation, advisers and training beside the partner ministries: 1,405 projects, EUR 15.5 bn, 389 running. The other 7,257, EUR 10.8 bn, go through German NGOs and church agencies, foundations, Engagement Global and UN agencies such as the World Food Programme. 1,099 regional programmes, EUR 14.5 bn, name a region and no country; they are in the totals, not in the country table or on the maps.

BMZ places every project at the partner country's capital, described as the place of the agreement with the government, never at a site: these records say where Germany works, not where it builds. They are the ministry's own; the CRS below is Germany's whole report to the OECD, BMZ's money among it, and the two are never added.

The largest projects running now

On the main map: the infrastructure subset

The main map's development-finance layer keeps BMZ's projects in the infrastructure sectors, by the same DAC codes as the African Development Bank, the World Bank and AFD, and counts only the infrastructure share of each project's money: 1,615 projects in 45 countries, EUR 14.7 bn (USD 16.5 bn), 63% paid out. KfW's 580 hold USD 12.9 bn of it, GIZ's 330 USD 3.1 bn and the other channels' 705 USD 0.5 bn; energy comes first, USD 7.6 bn. 6 projects tagged as budget support are left out. Each is an inverted triangle at its country's centre.

Aid activities: OECD Creditor Reporting System

Germany reports to the OECD at activity level, with 12,185 distinct titles for 28,650 records and descriptions that name the partner institution and often the region. The ministry's bilateral programmes are the bulk; the loans are KfW's, to Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya and the other economies it lends to on its own terms with a federal subsidy; the research ministry's many small records are university partnerships; DEG's are equity and loans to companies, reported as private-sector instruments.

The purpose codes are the reliable part. The descriptions often name a region or a town (10,746 records mention one), but the CRS carries no coordinates, so the aid is drawn at country points and kept off the project map.

Records that build something

Purpose codes for transport, energy, water and the facility codes of health and education, plus titles that mention building, renovating or drilling: 6,768 records, USD 13,624 m, over the seven years.

Power units with a German owner

The map's power layer carries an owner field; this table is those records filtered for a German company. They are the developers' solar farms under South Africa's renewable-energy procurement rounds, juwi's and ib vogt's, with ib vogt's share of a Benban plant in Egypt and a Siemens stake in Nigeria. The map's pipeline and cable layers hold no German owner.

Country-year series: investment stock, net aid, debt

Three official series describe German money in Africa one country and one year at a time. The OECD's FDI positions, which for Germany are the Bundesbank's figures, give the outward direct-investment stock by partner country. The DAC2a table gives net ODA by recipient. The World Bank's debt statistics give what each government owes German creditors: KfW's development loans and the older claims that survived the debt relief of the 2000s, and loans from German banks.

Direct-investment stock by partner country

Net ODA by recipient

Over 2010–2024 German net ODA to Africa came to USD 57.88 bn; Morocco received the most.

Debt owed to Germany

World Bank International Debt Statistics, counterpart 005: all public and publicly guaranteed debt to creditors there, the state and its banks together (series DPPG, as on the debt page), with the bilateral official part beside it. Sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed borrowing only; DEG's lending to companies and Hermes-covered export credits to private borrowers are outside the series.

How to read this page

One record is

In the BMZ tables, one BMZ project as the ministry publishes it, under the agency that carries it out; a triangle on the profile map is a country's projects together. In the aid tables, one CRS activity as Germany reports it. In the energy table, one GEM power unit, as the map carries it. In the series, one country and one year.

Status

BMZ projects carry IATI's status: 2 is running now (under construction on the main map), 3 and 4 finished. GEM records use the map's own mapping. Aid activities have no status.

Money

CRS commitments and disbursements are in current US dollars as reported. Net ODA is current prices. FDI stock is the OECD's net position, all resident units, immediate counterpart. Debt is the World Bank's public and publicly guaranteed stock owed to the lender's creditors, the state and its banks together, as the debt page counts it, with the bilateral official part, the state's own claims, beside it. None of these is a project value and none is added to the map's lenders. BMZ's commitments are in euros as it publishes them, from IATI commitment transactions; paid out is KfW's disbursements and GIZ's and the other channels' expenditure. The main map converts them to dollars at its stated rate and counts only the infrastructure share; neither is added to the CRS dollars.

Location

Aid, BMZ's projects and the three series are drawn at the country's interior point; BMZ gives every project the capital's point, the place of the agreement. Power units carry GEM's coordinates.

Not here, and why

• GIZ's own IATI file holds only the work other clients commission from it (the European Commission, the UK, the Netherlands), with no locations; GIZ's work for BMZ is in BMZ's files, read above. BMZ publishes no country file for Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritius or Seychelles, and gives no project a site.
• DEG's portfolio is published as a list of companies and countries without amounts per investment; Hermes export-credit guarantees have no project register.
• The federal government's Compact with Africa and its Africa strategy are policy documents, not datasets.

Sources and licences

• OECD, Creditor Reporting System, Germany as provider (DAC code 5), activity-level microdata through the SDMX API, one year at a time; OECD terms of use, free reuse with attribution. OECD, DAC2a, net ODA by recipient (measure 206), current prices. OECD, FDI positions by partner country (BMD4), Germany outward.
• Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), IATI 2.03 activity files, 53 African country and regional files through the IATI Registry (publisher bmz, DE-1), generated 30 Sep 2026; CC BY per the Registry.
• World Bank, International Debt Statistics, source 6, counterpart area 005; CC BY 4.0, release of 3 Dec 2025.
• Global Energy Monitor, Global Integrated Power Tracker, as the map draws it; CC BY 4.0.

Download

Everything on this page, with BMZ's aggregates by channel, country, sector and year and its largest running projects, the aid aggregates by country, year, purpose and agency, the three series per country and the filtered power units: germany.json.