Global Partnerships in Higher Education

The DAAD Bilateral SDG Graduate Schools aim to provide the infrastructure for fostering cooperative efforts among German higher education institutions and their counterparts in Latin America, Africa and Asia. They resonate with the UN Agenda 2030 call upon the world community to build global partnerships in order to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are formulated as joint objectives for the world community and cover a broad range of themes and social issues. Their ultimate goal is the generation of well-being and peaceful and inclusive societies while at the same time preserving our planet.

Achieving the SDGs will require a series of multidimensional transformations which must be based in systematic knowledge. Therefore, institutions of higher education are of foremost importance for realizing the Agenda 2030: They not only engage in fundamental research and the generation of robust basic knowledge that can contribute to higher ecological, social and economic sustainability. They also train young people who will be the future decision-makers and practitioners in different sectors (government, business, non-profit etc.) so that they can promote the sustainable well-being of their societies.

In the seven DAAD Bilateral SDG Graduate Schools, German universities are partnering with universities in Latin America, Asia and Africa, and their diversity reflects the multifaceted character of the Agenda 2030. They engage in capacity-building through developing research and teaching programs related to different SDGs in the natural and social sciences. They also promote academic internationalization and interdisciplinarity: Frequent exchanges among partners (at all stages of development) enable researchers and students to view global challenges from different regional perspectives and modes of knowledge production and identify interdependencies and cases for comparison between the different world regions. They also put into practice the Agenda 2030 mandate to overcome scientific and political boundaries and approach challenges for sustainable development from an integrated perspective. In order to disseminate their findings, all SDG Graduate schools have established ties with other epistemic communities and engage with important stakeholders from politics, the economic sector, and civil society. Funding for the DAAD SDG Graduate Schools is provided by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ.