Professor Michael Bohnet was one of the influential pioneers in the establishment of ZEF. As an Executive Director of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) he played a key role in designing the idea for ZEF in the mid-1990s.

Investigating and combining new and existing technologies with Indigenous knowledge systems – that is the aim of ‘iakumama 2050.’ The new research project by the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn (ZEF) pursues the goal of developing scenarios for how humans and nature can live together in regions affected by armed conflicts and raw material extraction. The Volkswagen Foundation is funding the project, which begins in July 2026 and will then be funded for one and a half years.

Tasneem Osman, junior researcher at ZEF, won the Prize for Best Flash Talk at the Conference Women and Girls in Science at the University of Namur in Belgium. Tasneem got the highest ranking for her talk "From invasive plants to disease risk: an overlooked one health perspective", in which she managed to tell her story in four slides.

During a three-day workshop from January 21-23, 2026, held in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, ZEF HEALTH presented and discussed three large-scale collaborative research programs on climate change, nutrition and health. Over 30 researchers and 40 stakeholders from Burkina Faso, Kenya, Ghana, Germany, France, Sweden and the United States discussed implementation insights, result interpretations, published conclusions, and knowledge transfer into practice.  The high-level event was hosted by Dr. Ali Sie, Director of Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna (CRSN) and Prof. Dr. Abdramane Soura, Principal Scientist at Institut Supérieur des Sciences de la Population (ISSP). It was organized by Prof. Dr. Ina Danquah, Hertz-Chair Innovation for Planetary Health and Director at ZEF, University of Bonn (UoB). 

During a three-day workshop from January 21-23, 2026, held in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, ZEF HEALTH presented and discussed three large-scale collaborative research programs on climate change, nutrition and health. Over 30 researchers and 40 stakeholders from Burkina Faso, Kenya, Ghana, Germany, France, Sweden and the United States discussed implementation insights, result interpretations, published conclusions, and knowledge transfer into practice.  The high-level event was hosted by Dr. Ali Sie, Director of Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna (CRSN) and Prof. Dr. Abdramane Soura, Principal Scientist at Institut Supérieur des Sciences de la Population (ISSP). It was organized by Prof. Dr. Ina Danquah, Hertz-Chair Innovation for Planetary Health and Director at ZEF, University of Bonn (UoB). 

When food prices skyrocket during an economic crisis, urban populations and people with low levels of education are primarily affected. This can have lifelong negative health consequences – such as stunted growth in children.

December 1, 2025. The project team of „Agrifoodsystems Transformative Research and Policy Guidance” and their partners from the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) project “Knowledge for Nutrition (K4N)” in Brussels held a hybrid workshop titled “Persistent stunting in Sub-Saharan Africa: local insights from three countries” at ZEF in Bonn. 

At ZEF Bonn, the Right Livelihood College Workshop 2025 brought together young researchers and global experts working on rural development, smallholder agriculture, and sustainable value chains. Supported by the DAAD German Academic Exchange Service with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the workshop fostered rich dialogue and collaboration across disciplines and regions.