KfW Entwicklungsbank

Our tasks and goals

For more than 50 years, KfW Development Bank has been supporting the Federal Government in achieving its goals in development policy and in international cooperation. We are a successful bank and development institution at the same time, which has many years of national and international financing expertise and development policy expertise worldwide. On behalf of the federal government, especially the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), we finance and support programs and projects with predominantly state actors in developing and emerging countries - from conception to implementation to success monitoring. Our goal is to support the partner countries in fighting poverty, securing peace, protecting the environment and climate and shaping globalization fairly.

Our topics

With money from the federal budget and our own funds, we finance investments and reform programs in various areas such as health, education, water supply, energy, rural development and financial system development.

Our work is having an impact worldwide: With the climate and environmental projects funded on behalf of the federal government in 2018 in the amount of EUR 5 billion - around 58% of the new commitments from KfW Development Bank - around 5.1 million tons are expected to be sold in the coming years Carbon dioxide equivalent saved per year in the partner countries.

Almost 130 million people will benefit from the newly committed projects in reproductive health, health infrastructure and the fight against infectious diseases. Almost half of the commitments are aimed at directly improving the health of mothers and children.

In 2018, EUR 2.8 billion flowed into projects in the energy sector, especially in the expansion of renewable energies. 1.6 million people received new or improved access to modern energy supplies. With the new projects committed in 2018 in the water, sewage and waste disposal sectors, we are reaching more than 60 million people. 3.5 million people benefit from the education commitments in the same year in the amount of EUR 622 million. Around 74% of these funds promote improved access to education for school children.

With the new commitments in 2018 of around EUR 597 million to banks, funds and microfinance institutions, they can grant around 800,000 loans with a total volume of EUR 2.4 billion, primarily to small businesses.

Our Global Commitment

KfW promotes development programs and thus future prospects in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Southeast Europe. We support the partner countries in creating better living conditions and at the same time protecting the climate and the environment. The range of countries is more heterogeneous and dynamic than ever: we work with developing and emerging countries and are increasingly active in conflict-affected countries.

In order to be closer to the projects in the partner countries, we are continuously expanding our worldwide presence and, in addition to locations in Frankfurt, Berlin and Brussels, we have external offices in almost 70 countries.

Our Effects

We want to know what Financial Cooperation (FC) achieves and how successful the projects and programs are. That is why we have been examining the actual effectiveness of completed projects since FC began in the 1960s. In 1990, the results of these ex-post evaluations were published for the first time in an evaluation report.

With the evaluations we find out whether a project has achieved its goals or not, what has worked well and what has worked less well and why. This is intended to help ensure the quality of our work and to learn from experience how the impact of projects can be further improved. All results of these ex-post evaluations will be made public.