The African Development Bank Group and Germany are advancing a shared agenda shaped by a commitment to reforming how development finance is structured and deployed across the continent. As the Bank Group implements the New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD), Germany's reform agenda reflects the same priorities, including coordinating capital, strengthening institutions and deepening cooperation based on mutual interest and shared outcomes.
NAFAD, endorsed under the Abidjan Consensus in April 2026, provides a framework for more coordinated mobilisation of capital, strengthened risk-sharing mechanisms and the development of investment-ready pipelines at scale. It supports efforts to expand access to capital, strengthen financial systems and accelerate industrialisation across regional member countries.
Germany's development cooperation reform plan, Shaping the Future Together Globally, adopted in January 2026, reinforces this direction, placing greater emphasis on targeted financing, differentiated instruments and stronger private sector participation. The reforms also emphasise economic cooperation, local value creation and the strengthening of multilateral institutions and financial systems, aligning closely with NAFAD's focus on linking capital mobilisation to economic transformation.
The country's reform agenda is implemented through Germany's development cooperation system, led by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, which brings together development finance, technical assistance and private sector investment through KfW Development Bank, the German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG), a subsidiary of KfW focused on private sector investment.
Efforts are increasingly focused on translating this alignment into delivery, with energy emerging as one of the most advanced areas of activity. Germany is a lead partner in Mission 300, the joint African Development Bank Group and World Bank Group initiative to connect 300 million people in Africa to electricity by 2030. Since 2021, Germany has contributed €234 million to the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) whose portfolio now spans 54 operations in 46 countries, with over $405 million committed.
Germany is a founding partner of the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa, co-managed by the Bank Group and Africa50. It has also committed €4 billion to African energy projects through 2030. This focus reflects a broader shift toward coordinated investment platforms and scalable financing approaches under both NAFAD and Germany's reform agenda.
Work also extends to private sector development and investment reform. Germany founded the "Compact with Africa," which works to strengthen investment conditions and mobilise private capital. Between 2020 and 2024, the Bank Group provided more than $14 billion in support to "Compact with Africa" countries and helped mobilise additional financing through instruments including partial credit guarantees.
The relationship between the Bank Group and Germany spans more than four decades. Germany became a member of the Bank Group in 1983 and has contributed to the African Development Fund, the Bank Group's concessional lending arm, since 1973. It is the second-largest contributor to the Fund's seventeenth replenishment (ADF-17), with a pledge of €607.572 million, and ranks as the third-largest non-regional shareholder cumulatively.
As implementation of NAFAD advances and Germany pursues its reform agenda, the partnership is translating shared priorities into more coordinated financing systems, linking capital, institutions, and delivery across the continent.
