The Regional Director for East Africa at the German Agency for Technical Assistance (GTZ) on a three-day visit to IGAD Secretariat in Djibouti said that her country will continue to support IGAD because the regional organization is a building block of the African Economic Community under AU and the region has genuine political and economic challenges.

 

During an exclusive interview with IGAD News, Ms. Marita Broemmelmeier further pointed out that her organization is working both at bilateral and regional levels with individual countries and the regional economic communities such as IGAD to ensure effective delivery of development cooperation.

“From our European Union experience, we have learnt that there are so many issues that cannot be addressed at national or bilateral level and therefore a regional approach is needed,” she stated adding that the EU also has some strong members that help to tackle certain matters at global level.

She described her visit as a response to an earlier one that the IGAD Executive Secretary had made to Germany in November 2008 and not an assessment of the cooperation between the two organizations that has existed for more than 20 years.

As the current cooperation agreement comes to an end in 2011, Ms. Marita Broemmelmeier revealed that discussions are already underway to develop a new technical cooperation that embraces the revitalization agenda of IGAD.