Karsten Weitzenegger Consulting

11/08/2026

Heading to to explore strategic options for supporting local in and . Looking forward to on-the-ground conversations and identifying where sustainable partnerships can create the most impact.

30/06/2026

With the launch of the new South-North Commission at , Germany is attempting to reopen the conversation on global development beyond 2030. Co-chaired by Olaf Scholz and Laura Chinchilla, the independent Commission explicitly evokes the legacy of the Brandt Commission of 1980. Its success will depend not on the prestige of its members, but on its ability to create trust, shared ownership, and proposals that carry political weight across the globe. https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?p=31957

25/06/2026

EU’s new Evaluation Policy for External Action doubles down on accountability, learning and impact – including for investments. Clearer roles, stronger use of evidence and strategic evaluations will make it easier to track what really works in partner countries and why, so Global Gateway can deliver measurable, sustainable connectivity and development impact.

EU’s new Evaluation Policy for External Action doubles down on accountability, learning and impact – including for Global Gateway investments. Clearer roles,

23/06/2026

⚓ Hamburg next week. One conference. Four fights worth having. 💥
I'm covering the Hamburg Sustainability Conference 2026 🇩🇪 — and I'm not going there to nod along. 🙅‍♂️
Four questions will drive my reporting: 👇
🥊 Can economies actually survive disruption — or just delay the damage? 📊
Resilience is a buzzword. I want the hard numbers. 📉
🥊 Which technologies are genuinely changing our planet's trajectory — and which ones are greenwashing with better PR? 🌍
Innovation deserves scrutiny, not applause. 🔍
🥊 How much risk are we willing to ignore before planning finally gets honest? ⚠️
Uncertainty is real. Pretending otherwise is a policy failure. 🏛️
🥊 Is multilateralism fixable — or are we dressing up a broken system in new language? 🌐
Global governance needs more than good intentions. It needs architecture. 🏗️
I'll be talking to the people who disagree. 🗣️ I'll be asking the questions that don't fit the panel format. 🎙️ And I'll share what actually moves the needle. 🎯
Who should I meet? 🤝 What's the question no one's asking? 🤔 What would you need to hear from Hamburg to change how you work? 💡
Drop it below. 👇

09/06/2026

🌱 Who controls the seed controls the food.
Today in Brussels, the brought together smallholder farmers from Zimbabwe, rice breeders from the Philippines and EU policymakers for a frank conversation about a question that rarely makes headlines: how do European trade deals affect the right to food for millions of people in the Global South?
The answer, laid out across a full day of workshops and plenaries, is uncomfortable.
Through bilateral trade agreements, the EU is systematically pushing the plant variety protection standard onto African and Asian countries, effectively preventing smallholder farmers from saving, exchanging or selling their own seed. At the same time, proposed EU reforms on plant reproductive material (PRM) and new genomic techniques (NGT) risk deepening corporate control over the very foundation of our food systems.
The good news: alternatives exist. Participatory plant breeding works. Pan-African seed sovereignty frameworks are being built. And the demand for genuine EU policy coherence on development is growing louder.
📖 Full report on https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?p=31850

19/05/2026

Europe’s latest Foreign Affairs Council in its Development configuration on 18 May 2026 marks a quiet but significant shift: EU development cooperation is being recast as a geopolitical tool, with Kaja Kallas openly calling for aid, trade and security partnerships to be more tightly aligned with Europe’s strategic interests.
https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?p=31683

19/05/2026

24/04/2026

The late Jürgen was one of the most consequential philosophers, sociologists, and public intellectuals of the postwar era, and a foundational thinker for ’s core reference disciplines. His work deserves more than a footnote in our professional memory. https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?p=31388

24/04/2026

The Feminist Innovation in Monitoring and Evaluation (FIME) Small Awards have produced something very tangible for practitioners: six concrete toolkits that cover the full evaluation cycle, from policy design and crisis response to relocation, community projects, impact investing, and evaluator training. They were developed in real-world settings and respond to gaps most of us know too well: what women and marginalized groups describe as transformative change rarely shows up in our logframes or indicators. Thanks Better Evaluation https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?p=31403

24/04/2026

Germany’s upcoming North South Commission sits at the intersection of two agendas: repositioning relations with the Global South and shaping a post‑2030 framework to succeed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It can become a strategic platform for rethinking partnerships and global rules, but it also risks ending up as a narrowly framed, low‑impact expert panel. https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?p=31416