In March 2015, Germany’s Federal Parliament (Bundestag) asked the Federal government to report every second year on Germany’s European and international cooperation in education, science and research. The first report of this sort appeared in 2017. On 13 November, the cabinet of ministers of the Federal Government adopted the second report, covering the years 2017 and 2018. One of the foci of this present report is cooperation with Africa and the results of the Africa Strategy of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research 2014-2018. The report covers, next to higher education and research, also the area of vocational education and training.

The Federal Minister of Education and Research, Anja Karliczek, stressed that successful education and research required international cooperation, because only this way could today’s big challenges such as climate change be addressed. According to the minister, the report demonstrated that Germany’s research and education institutions were internationally very well ‘networked’. As examples, she quoted the fact that Germany had already surpassed the target it set itself for the number of foreign students in 2020. While the target set was 350,000, the number reached in the academic year 2017/2018 was already 375,000. Karliczek also called cooperation with countries in western and southern Africa a success story.

BMBF (only in German)