Tackling rural poverty, together

Knowledge is the key to mastering the challenges of the future in international cooperation. It is a topic of fascinating complexity that affects all areas of life. All development is based on knowledge.

That is why GTZ is devoting this year’s Eschborn Dialogue on 5 and 6 September to the theme Knowledge Powers Development – Sharing experience, shaping the future.

Knowledge as a factor of production is becoming increasingly important, because economic growth depends primarily on a growth in knowledge. Conversely, the lack of access to knowledge is always an obstacle to development.

GTZ is a company that concerns itself with knowledge and learning in a variety of ways. As a learning organisation, GTZ lives from the experience and knowledge it gains in projects and programmes in partner countries. It mainstreams the knowledge of its staff members and GTZ-specific experience within the company. The prize for "Knowledge Manager of the Year 2005" awarded by the Commerzbank, Financial Times Deutschland and the economic journal "impulse" to GTZ is a recognition of this. At this year's Eschborn Dialogue, GTZ will thus be inviting representatives of politics, business, academia and civil society to discuss the manifold aspects of knowledge with development experts. Concrete work experience and new theoretical approaches show ways of facing the challenges of the future. A varied programme of side-events will allow participants to experience the topic at first hand. And finally, the Eschborn Dialogue offers a forum for the face-to-face discussions and exchanges of views without which the dissemination of knowledge would be unthinkable.