DIE becomes a partner of the Collaborative Research Centre 228 “Future Rural Africa: Future-Making and Socio-Ecological Transformation” of the Universities of Bonn and Cologne.
At the end of November, the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Grants Committee for Collaborative Research Centres (SFB) decided to continue funding the SFB from 1 January 2022. The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) will participate in this second phase of the SFB with the project “Between Intensification and Conservation Discourses on Rural Development in Africa” led by Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Dr. Michael Brüntrup and Dr. Andreas Stamm.
Over the next four years, the project will look at the role of science in shaping and deciding on the future of rural Africa, using the example of development corridors in eastern and southern Africa. The project involves the parallel and comparative analysis of two important scientific knowledge systems for these spaces: development corridor or hub approaches, and agriculture. We aim to analyse how these knowledge systems are organised and funded, what they say and how they influence internal development dynamics, political and economic contestation processes within the corridors in discourses and policy making.
The project and, more generally, the DIE’s expertise in scientific policy advice should also help to improve the use of SFB results in particular and research in general in discussions about (rural) development.
