Woman presenting at a whiteboard during a team workshop

Knowledge Transfer and Capacity Building in Iraq

Knowledge cannot be donated. It takes hold where people work on something together — in a workshop, in a training room, on a shared project. That is where we begin: bringing German technical expertise together with Iraqi specialists and emerging talent.

Key figures

+7.4 million

Growth of the working-age population by 2033

Source: IMF Iraq Country Report, 2025

5.5 %

Annual growth needed to bring unemployment into single digits by 2033

Source: IMF Iraq Country Report, 2025

The starting point

Iraq is a young country. By 2033, its working-age population is projected to grow by around 7.4 million people. The labour market cannot yet absorb that growth: the IMF estimates that annual growth of at least 5.5 percent would be needed to bring unemployment into single digits by 2033 — well above the average of the past two decades. (Source: IMF, Iraq Country Report, 2025)

Alongside this sits a familiar mismatch. People complete qualifications that employers cannot readily use.

Group of young adults using tablets and notebooks during a classroom discussion

This is not primarily a funding gap. It is a gap in structures and know-how — which makes it a solvable one.

Our approach

Germany’s dual vocational training system is studied internationally for one reason above all: it ties workplace practice and classroom instruction together by design rather than by good intention. That system cannot be exported wholesale. Its underlying principles travel well.

We design and deliver educational measures, workshops and training programmes for specialists and emerging talent in Iraq and Germany. Our focus is on people already working or about to enter the workforce — engineers, technicians, administrative staff, junior professionals in companies and institutions.

What makes this work is the intercultural and linguistic capacity of our network. We operate in German, English and Arabic. Not as a translation service: knowledge transfer does not happen without a shared language, and the terminology of a technical field is precisely where translation tends to fail.