Development policy, like other foreign policy fields, has been put into the service of migration management. Since the »long summer of migration« (Kasparek/Speer 2015) and in the wake of the EU-African Summit of Valletta, organizations dealing with development cooperation have increasingly been used to implement migration policy projects in African countries of origin and transit. On the German side, a government-owned company, the GIZ (German Society for International Cooperation) is the central actor in this field. Using projects currently run by GIZ in African countries, this article explains the emergence of this player in development policy, and its role in migration and border management. The article then scrutinizes the narratives by which this role is legitimized. It analyzes how GIZ’s work is related to the strategies of German and EU migration policy, and places the company within the process of externalizing the European border regime, or more specifically, the development of a Euro-African border regime.