Official kick-off of the ZEF-led Doctoral Studies Support Program took place in Bogota, Colombia on October 16, 2018.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and the Pontifical Academy of Science released a Declaration on "Food Safety and Healthy Diets for All" on October 26, 2018. It is based on a Workshop on Food Safety and Healthy Diets held in the Vatican, September 12-13, 2018.

Marco Elías Cisneros Tersitsch received the Prize for the best doctoral thesis written and supervised at ZEF, awarded by the "Friends of ZEF" Association, for his dissertation on "The impact of public policies on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon".

ZEF alumna Denise Margaret S. Matias obtained the Josef G. Knoll European Science Award by the foundation fiat panis for her doctoral thesis

New project at ZEF about utilizing the nutritional and economic potentials of edible insects in Myanmar and Madagascar, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food.

The thematic scope of the platform has been broadened.

ZEF at the 30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE) in Vancouver, July 28-August 2, 2018.

Professor Franz W. Gatzweiler, Professor Manfred Max-Neef and Professor Felix Fuders published a joint statement on the status quo of life in urban environments and the aspirations in the New Urban Agenda of the United Nations

ZEF’s German-Ethiopian NutriHAF project launches manual for local farmers and consumers on “Vegetable species for multi-storey cropping systems and human nutrition”.

During the IITA Board meeting in Bonn, April 23-26, 2018, international and German experts on Africa and development will talk about the crucial role of and measures for Africa's agricultural development.

Read about farmers in Africa, floods in Bangladesh, forests in South America and how Africa can build a future free from hunger and malnutrition in our latest ZEF news magazine.

"Despite progress made over the past 20 years, hunger in Africa persists" said Dr. Ousmane Badiane at an event at ZEF today during which the German version of '"Nourished": How Africa can build a future free from hunger and malnutrition' was launched. The report was published in English by the Malabo Montpellier Panel last year.

ZEF is part of the new "Climate Information to support integrated Renewable Electricity Generation in West Africa" (CIREG), a research project funded by the European Research Area for Climate Services. ZEF will receive around 400,000 euros for the upcoming three years for its research part. The project is led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Read about our research, outreach and capacity development activities of the past two years in our latest Annual Report. This year's lead article deals with research on bioeconomy in support of sustainable transformation and development.

ZEF has been ranked again by the University of Pennsylvania as one of the top think tanks worldwide. In its 2017 Ranking ZEF was listed in the following categories: Rank 12 at: Top Science and Technology Think Tanks;Rank 19 at: Best University Affiliated Think Tank and Rank 25 at: Top Energy and Resource Policy Think Tanks

Germany's Federal Foreign Office and the DAAD promote sustainable rural transformation with 1.8 million euros: ZEF has initiated and will run the new "West African Center for Sustainable Rural Transformation" to strengthen research and education in development planning, agricultural economics and aspects of renewable energy and irrigated agriculture in Africa.