CIM ON SITE. ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Building bridges: person to person

Sometimes Ralf Oetzel does not know whether he is supposed to feel like a German or an Ecuadorian. He advises the Ecuadorian Institute for International Cooperation (INECI), the state institution for bilateral and multilateral development cooperation (DC). During recent negotiations between Germany and Ecuador, Oetzel, a German, was a member of the Ecuadorian delegation. But he himself sees his role-conflict situation as one of the exciting challenges of donor coordination. Ecuadorian municipalities and provinces ask him what kind of support DC can give them. “His work has made a huge contribution to our better understanding of the world of international DC,” says Yolanda Galarza, former department director at INECI and today employed in the Office of the President. Talks with GIZ and KfW advisors on site, interviews for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and especially coordination of the round table in which international donors and government entities take part are all in a day’s work for Ralf Oetzel. “I think it’s exciting to build bridges from one person to another, and that’s exactly what I’m supposed to be doing here,” explains the political scientist, who has already completed assignments in Latin America for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (DEZA) and the German Development Service (DED). His work also advances implementation of the Millennium Development Goals in Ecuador.