Judith Wassmann from GIZ opened the oral presentation session and explained that this year there is a big difference in the approach, because they now don’t focus just on scientific inputs but really focus on partnerships and cooperation.

Felicitas Röhrig from BMZ starts by saying that joint partnerships are crucial nowadays and points out that especially with a view to the Ukrainian war, we see how relevant the topic of food security is. The triple crisis of conflict, covid and climate change leads to hunger and is a big challenge. The global research partnership CGIAR is in a unique position to solve todays water, and food crisis. For 10 years BMZ have been supporting CGIAR. Furthermore they have a quite long partnership with ATSAF e.V. where they especially focus on projects with young scientists. BMZ aims to strengthen their partnerships.

Juan Luca Restrepo from CGIAR recoginizes that this organization has been experiencing an amazing organic growth of social capital over the last years. Over 3000 partnership have been developed with CGIAR. For him it is important to make clear, that there is no simple “One size fits all” top down solution, but it has to be acknowledged that the solutions need to be adapted to the context. Christophe Larose from the European Commission also sees the importance of investing in knowledge and involving actors.

Folkard Asch, professor at the University of Hohenheim and chair of ATSAF e.V., first brought the audience to laugh when he said, he wouldn’t explain what ATSAF e.V. is as we could all read the flyer ourselves. He explains that ATSAF e.V. is currently organizing a new tandem program where people from the global south are coming to Germany to exchange knowledge and experience. He pointed out that dialogue is the most important thing, between different institutions or between professors and students. In the end everything is about human capital and it should not be underestimated what young people can do. So cooperations with universities are needed in his view. This statement was also supported by someone in the audience.