Development 15

Development cooperation means helping people to help themselves. It is value-oriented, but it is also interest-driven. I never made a secret of it. Development cooperation does not have to be harmful to German companies.

FAZ (Manfred Schäfers, 20.11.2009): Entwicklungshilfe muss sich nicht überflüssig machen.

Dirk-Ekkehard Niebel (born in 1963) is a former German politician (FDP). He was Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development from 2009 to 2013. He has been working as a consultant for the weapons and automotive supplier Rheinmetall since 2015.

According to Niebel, his ministry was not a “world social agency” (Herter 2010). An example: In 2001, the Kaweri coffee plantation opened in Uganda with investments from the German company Neumann (NKG). The NKG demanded that the land be uninhabited. Residents should be resettled with compensation. Resettlement was left to the Ugandan government, which forcibly displaced 2,000 people. When the expellees started a campaign against this with the NGO FIAN, Niebel took a protective stance in front of the German company in 2013: "The Kaweri plantation is the largest German investment in Uganda and has the attention and goodwill of the German government" (Die Zeit, August 13th, 2013). 2013). At the end of 2019, the Ugandan state offered the displaced persons compensation (FIAN, February 17, 2020).

*FIAN International (2019): Human Rights violations in the context of Kaweri  coffee Plantation/Neumann Kaffee Gruppe in Mubende/Uganda.

2009