Evaluation of the BMZ Emergency COVID-19 Support Programme: Lessons from the Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had serious health and socio economic consequences worldwide. Whereas the countries of the Global North managed to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic through government spending, many of the countries of the Global South lacked the necessary funds. During the pandemic, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased by around 71 million. Vulnerable groups such as women, children and refugees were affected particularly severely in terms of health and socio-economic impacts (Liu et al., 2023; Tan et al., 2023). In response, Germany‘s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) launched the Emergency COVID-19 Support Programme (Corona-Sofortprogramm, CSP) in April 2020. The programme encompassed 4.8 billion euros in funding to finance measures in 2020 and 2021 for containing the pandemic and mitigating its health and socio-economic consequences in the partner countries of German development cooperation (DC). In addition to financing measures promoting health and income, the CSP focused on reaching particularly vulnerable groups of persons for example in refugee and crisis regions. The CSP was one of various crisis programmes launched by international DC actors.