The DAAD Strategy 2030

In the face of common global challenges, international academic cooperation is more important than ever. At the same time, scientific exchange is becoming increasingly more complex due to geopolitical shifts and conflicts.
The DAAD Strategy 2030 serves as a compass for the DAAD. It analyses the current conditions for international academic cooperation and, on this basis, formulates the priorities and objectives of the DAAD's work until the end of the decade.
In this context, the strategy pursues a foreign science realpolitik approach that highlights the opportunities of international cooperation while consciously reflecting on potential risks. The DAAD Strategy 2030 emphasises the role of the DAAD as a stakeholder in research and academic relations policy and science diplomacy. It also reflects the role and impact of the DAAD as a German and European organisation. Current developments at universities and in society are systematically taken into account.
Against this background, the DAAD Strategy 2030 sets four priorities:
- We strengthen Germany as a location for academia, science, innovation and business.
- We seek joint solutions to global challenges.
- We shape science diplomacy in a multipolar world.
- We promote democracy and social cohesion.
These priorities are systematically reflected in the ten strategic objectives that the strategy formulates along the three central fields of action of the DAAD – funding, networking, advising – as well as the three strategic intersecting dimensions – sustainability, diversity, digitisation.

By implementing these strategic objectives, the DAAD is pursuing its mission as well as its vision, which the strategy formulates on the basis of the DAAD motto ‘Change through Exchange’: Through international academic exchange (mission), we promote the personal development and qualification of people and shape social and global transformation processes for a better future on our planet (vision).

The DAAD Strategy 2030 was developed in a broad process with participation by our member universities and student organisations, funding recipients and alumni, the relevant federal ministries – above all the Federal Foreign Office as our institutional sponsor – as well as other partners and stakeholders.