ZEF's Annual Report gives you an overview of our core research and capacity development activities during the last year.

Enjoy the read on research of our senior and junior researchers in Africa, Latin America as well as Central and South East Asia.

Read the interview with Grace Villamor, a PhD student at ZEF, who tells about the difficulties of conducting field research in Indonesia and how she coped with tigers, shaky soil and further challenges.

“Business is not about profit. Business is about solving problems” said the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus at the beginning of his talk at ZEF on November 6, 2010. The Nobel Prize Peace winner of 2006 impressed, inspired and motivated around 100 students from all over world during his talk in Bonn.

For all of you who missed Frances Stewart's lecture at ZEF on “Risk and Uncertainty: Marginalization of the People” on October 29, 2010, you can now watch it online here.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Forum 2010, co-organized by ZEF and the CASS Institute of Economics, and with financial support by the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) took place in Beijing, China from October 22–24, 2010.

ZEF together with the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana organized the annual collaboration workshop taking place from September 27-28, 2010 in Accra, Ghana.

Nine years ago, US troops took over Kabul. Instead of making progress, Afghanistan seems to have sunk ever deeper into civil war since then. In an interview with Hans Dembowski, published in the latest edition of "D&C", Conrad Schetter (ZEF expert on Afghanistan) discussed why development efforts have not borne more fruit.

The poorest are left behind. This is evident at a global scale, as income poverty declines but hunger - an indication of extreme poverty – increases. The University of Bonn’s Center for Development Research (ZEF) received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study the root causes of extreme poverty and develop new approaches for addressing the problem.

The Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn (ZEF) is going to be an official campus of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize". This was agreed upon at a conference in Bonn on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the "Alternative Nobel Prize" taking place from September 14-19, 2010.

ZEF organizes a panel on ‘Environmental Change, Uncertainty and the Adaptation of Local Knowledge Systems’ at the European Southeast-Asia Conference (EuroSEAS) in Gothenburg/Sweden, taking place from August 26-28.

For many years, the European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (ECMSAS) has been an important platform and indicator of contemporary trends in South Asian studies worldwide. The 21st ECMSAS will host 44 panels, covering a broad range of research subjects, among them a panel co-hosted by ZEF.

ZEF takes the lead in setting up “WASCAL”, the West African Science Service Center on Climate and Adapted Land Use. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is providing funds of 2.9 million Euros for an initial project phase lasting until mid 2011 for establishing this Center in West Africa.

George Domfe and Clement Adamba are part of a delegation of PhD Students from the ZEF/ISSER Development Studies Programme in Accra, Ghana, currently visiting ZEF. In an interview with ZEF they relate on their country's development perspectives and academic life in Africa and Germany.

ZEF and the Right Livelihood College offer scholarships for young researchers studying at German universities to participate in the Conference of the Right Livelihood Award (also known as "Alternative Nobel Prize") taking place in Bonn, September 14-19, 2010. The scholarships will be funded by DAAD.

On May 28, 2010 around 80 international development experts met in Bonn to discuss the outcome and implications of the study “Waiting for the water to come? Poverty reduction in times of global climate change”. This study was conducted by ZEF in association with CARE Germany-Luxemburg in 2009.

Margret Catley-Carlson (former Chair and now Patron of the Global Water Partnership) gave a talk on “New Worlds of Water” at ZEF on June 7th. In her well-attended lecture she talked about the correlations between water and security, climate implications, and agriculture as well as about new approaches and technologies and the imperative for policy change.

This year's Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, taking place from 21 to 23 June 2010 in Bonn, is dedicated to the topic Climate Change and the Media. ZEF will host a workshop which will focus on "Covering Climate Change in West Africa: An exchange between journalists and scientists" on June 22.

On May 20, the ambassador of the Republic of Uzbekistan, His Excellency Dilshod Akhatov and his first secretary, Mr. Mavlon Mamirov, visited ZEF. They were welcomed by Prof. Joachim von Braun, Prof. Solvay Gerke (both ZEF directors) and Dr. Ahmad Manschadi (scientific coordinator of the Uzbekistan Project at ZEF).

The Public Lecture held by Dr. Shenggen Fan on May 7, 2010 at ZEF was very well received by the audience. Around 100 people came to ZEF's premises to hear about “The Role of Emerging Economies in Global Food Security” and were involved in a lively discussion which followed Dr. Shenggen's talk.

On April 20-21 2010, ZEF held a stakeholder workshop on "Shallow Groundwater Irrigation in the Atankwidi and Anayere Basins: Research Results and Policy Options" in Bolgatanga, UER, Ghana. The workshop took place within the scope of the CGIAR Challenge Program (CP) Water and Food which had awarded a research grant to a consortium of international and national research institutions to carry out research on the ‘Contribution of informal shallow groundwater irrigation to livelihoods security and poverty reduction in the White Volta Basin: current extent and future sustainability.’