The German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst – DAAD) has received funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to establish its ‘SDG Partnerships’ programme which promotes international higher education partnerships in addressing the 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). This currently involves the selection of 15 projects at German higher education and research institutions. They will receive around 5.7 million euros by the end of 2025. The total amount available under the programme until 2027 is around 20 million euros.

The United Nations has formulated 17 sustainable development goals that are to be achieved by 2030 as an answer to the challenges of the 21st century. Academia and higher education institutions are to play a key part in this: they are to decisively advance the attainment of these goals by extending cooperation among institutions and by improving higher education in countries of the Global South. So-called SDG Partnerships under the eponymous DAAD programme are thus intended to support German higher education institutions and their partners in the Global South in anchoring sustainability issues more firmly within their teaching, research and transfer, and thus to promote the local development of efficient and cosmopolitan higher education institutions. 

The programme comprises two funding lines: the first is open to all SDG-related disciplines at German higher education institutions. The second funding line ‘One Health’ exclusively includes healthcare projects. 

The first selection round has now enabled 15 projects to be implemented at 14 German higher education institutions and one non-university research institution. The selected projects indicate that a wide range of faculties at higher education institutions, including engineering and the humanities, are making significant contributions to achieving the SDGs. The planned use of digital interchange and cooperation formats within the projects also underlines that sustainability plays a decisive role not only in each project’s content, but also in its implementation by the participating academics.

As part of the SDG Partnerships programme, the DAAD will in January 2022 start funding cooperation projects at the 

• Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung

and at the following higher education institutions:

• Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Universität Bremen
• Technische Universität Chemnitz (2 Projekte)
• Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg
• Technische Universität Dresden
• Hochschule für Nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde
• Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
• Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaft Hamburg
• Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
• Hochschule Kempten
• Philipps-Universität Marburg
• Hochschule Osnabrück
• Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg