Budget cuts imperil global academic cooperation, DAAD warns

Drastic budget cuts announced by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) are going to have a serious impact on the country’s international academic links, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) warns.

Current BMZ funding plans would result in all but one DAAD academic cooperation programme being suspended by 2031. And programmes run by the organisation with special BMZ funding, which amounted to around €25 million (approximately US$29.1 million) last year, would be discontinued.

Funding for academic networks with the Global South is set to be phased out completely, according to a statement from the DAAD.

“These cuts threaten a key pillar of Germany’s foreign science policy and development cooperation: the structured and demonstrably highly successful engagement of our universities in promoting German interests through cooperation with partners in the Global South,” said DAAD president Joybrato Mukherjee.

“Those who scale back these university partnerships may save money in the short term, but at the same time they weaken Germany’s international capacity to act in science, business and the recruitment of skilled workers. The resulting gaps worldwide will be filled by other states such as China and possibly Russia too – with significant consequences for Germany’s influence in the countries of the Global South.”

Impact on Global South

The DAAD fears that the BMZ cuts will severely affect university partnerships with countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Already this year, projects in high demand from German universities, for example, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) partnerships, cannot be re-tendered. In the next few years, all university cooperation programmes – with the exception of a single programme for alumni – as well as those benefiting from BMZ special funding initiatives, including the “practical partnerships between universities and companies in Germany and Africa”, will come to an end.

The termination of these programmes is set to affect around 60 universities in Germany by 2031.

To date, the DAAD has used BMZ funding to support projects involving German universities and partner institutions in countries of the Global South. These schemes focus on future-orientated topics such as energy supply, water management, health, digitalisation and entrepreneurship.

Here, the DAAD supports the development of practice-orientated degree programmes, the expansion of joint research, the training of skilled workers and improvements in the management of universities and research institutions.

Over the past five years, the higher education programmes funded by the DAAD have reached almost 120,000 people in nearly 60 countries. Around 450 partner universities and institutions worldwide were involved.

Stable scientific networks

“Many global challenges can only be tackled in close cooperation with partners in the Global South,” said Mukherjee. “University cooperation creates long-term, international networks between universities, the scientific community, business and politics. Those who lose access to these scientific networks also lose vital access to innovation, international partners and future markets.”

Mukherjee noted that Germany is competing globally for talent, partners and scientific collaborations, stressing that in times of geopolitical tension and under intense systemic competitive pressure, Germany needs stable international scientific networks.

“University partnerships not only promote development opportunities in partner countries but also strengthen Germany’s interests in science, business and foreign policy worldwide,” he said. “We should therefore work together with great commitment to maintain these networks in the long term.”

Global commitments undermined

Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, told University World News: “I am truly alarmed by these cuts, which jeopardise Germany’s reputation as a model for long-term partnership-building in the Global South. The long-term damage to our ability to address common societal challenges will be inestimable.

“At this time of geopolitical rupture, now is precisely the time for Germany and other EU member states to lead in the development of equitable partnerships with institutions in the Global South. Now is not the time for retreat, but for additional investment.”

Damtew Teferra, founding director of the International Network for Higher Education in Africa and founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of African Higher Education, said it was “deeply concerning” that Germany would implement “such massive cuts to funding for its long-established and highly respected global academic networks and cooperation programmes”.

But they reflect a pattern unfolding across much of the Global North, where shifting geopolitical priorities, economic pressures, domestic political considerations and growing nationalist tendencies are shifting and reshaping commitments to international cooperation and development engagement, he told University World News.

“Development cooperation, once framed as a shared global responsibility and a central pillar of international engagement, increasingly appears vulnerable to short-term political calculations and changing national priorities.”

He said the implications extend far beyond the immediate financial consequences for universities, research institutions and collaborative initiatives: “They raise fundamental questions about the credibility and sustainability of global commitments themselves.”

The commitment to the SDGs, for instance, was envisioned as a collective and universal agenda requiring sustained international support, cooperation and shared responsibility. Yet recent assessments, including reports from the UN, continue to paint a concerning picture of lack of progress toward achieving these goals.

“Against this backdrop, the withdrawal or reduction of support for international development and academic cooperation initiatives and international networks risks further undermining the already fragile progress.”

He warned that when influential countries retreat from their responsibilities, the consequences are disproportionately borne by those regions and communities with fewer resources and greater developmental challenges.

“Such disengagement cannot simply be viewed as a routine policy adjustment or fiscal re-calibration,” he said.

“At best, it reflects a serious weakening of collective responsibility toward global development objectives; at worst, it represents an abdication of moral and political obligations in a world where global challenges increasingly demand greater – not lesser – international cooperation.

At the 24th International Conference on Higher Education in Africa and the Fourth Higher Education Forum for Africa, Asia and Latin America (HEFAALA) Symposium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in late April, he proposed a Global Compact in Research Collaboration to “challenge and respond to these increasingly fragile and unsustainable development trajectories, which require the active engagement, shared commitment and collective voices of stakeholders from both the Global North and the Global South,” he said.

New data on grant recipients

On 19 May the DAAD published new figures in its latest annual report which show that in 2025 the DAAD supported 132,903 students, graduates, researchers and university staff worldwide in their academic mobility.

Most recipients received financial support through the EU’s Erasmus+ programme (around 62,300 people), followed by programmes run by the Federal Foreign Office (31,300 people), the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR; 23,300 people) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ; 14,700 people).

In total, the DAAD provided funding to just under 79,000 people from Germany and around 54,000 people from abroad.

The most popular destination countries for German grant recipients were Spain, France and Italy.

However, the majority of international grant recipients came from Ukraine, Nigeria and Egypt.

Women accounted for 52% of international grant recipients and 59% of German grant recipients. In addition, the DAAD supported around 2,800 internationalisation projects at German higher education institutions worldwide in 2025.

* Michael Gardner can be reached at michael.gardner@uw-news.com