The German Government has resorted to a number of austerity measures affecting various areas of society, including higher education and development cooperation. Abolishing development-related training programs and university partnerships is a strategic mistake, Matin Qaim writes in his commentary for the German daily newspaper Tagesppiegel on June 24, 2026.
For nearly 40 years, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has been funding development-related postgraduate programs (EPOS) at German universities. These programs focus on various aspects of sustainable development, such as alleviating hunger and poverty, global health, locally-adapted agricultural innovations, or climate protection, just to name a few. Funding is provided to scholarship recipients from the Global South who study or pursue their doctoral degrees in these programmes and then usually return to their home countries.
The BMZ also supports university partnerships through which academic programs are established and further developed at universities in the Global South with the professional support of German universities. Both initiatives – the EPOS programs and the university partnerships – are managed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Around 60 German universities and more than 400 partner institutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are involved.
Now the BMZ has decided to drastically reduce this type of funding and phase it out over the next five years.
Read the full commentary in English here: https://www.rural21.com/english/opinion-corner/detail/article/german-government-dismantles-geopolitically-relevant-networks.html