Stefan Schmitz is head of the Division Rural Development and Food Security at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Bonn. From 2007 until 2009 he worked as senior adviser to the Secretariat of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, leading the work on Managing for Development Results. Before that he coordinated the German bilateral cooperation program with South Africa and Namibia and was deputy head of the Infrastructure Division at the BMZ. Before joining the BMZ in 2001, he held different posts in the German federal administration in the fields of statistical information systems, regional planning and international cooperation on urban issues. He also had several assignments as an adviser to the cooperation program of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in China. Over the years he had numerous assignments at different German universities. He received scholarships of the McCloy Fellowship of the American Council on Germany and of the German Academic Exchange Service. In 1985 he graduated from Bonn University in Geography and Mathematics and received a PhD in Geosciences from Freie Universität, Berlin, in 2000.
