SEARCA has been tapped by the University of Hohenheim, Germany as one of its network partners in its project on Food Security Center supported by the Government of Germany.

The University of Hohenheim is one of five German universities that emerged as the best in a competition involving 44 outstanding university projects. Each winning university will each get up to €5 million funding for promoting development cooperation over the next five years.

The competition is a joint initiative of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The other selected German universities are Technical University of Braunschweig, University of Kassel, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, and Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich.

These universities have melded all aspects of their current commitment to development cooperation into excellent programs that focus on topics that fall within the Millennium Development Goals. They cooperate with each other in a partnership network, enabling them to strengthen their partner universities in developing countries and facilitate their integration into the international scientific community.

The award-winning projects are as follows: "Excellence through Dialogue—Sustainable Water Management in developing Countries" of the Technical University of Braunschweig; "Food Security Center" of University of Hohenheim; "International Center for Development and Decent Work" of University of Kassel; "Centre for Natural Resources and Development" of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences; and "LMU Center for International Health" of the University of Munich.

This initiative is envisioned to sustainably strengthen university structures in the developing countries; reinforce the importance of development cooperation in German universities; and showcase the excellence of universities in dealing with development policy issues, functioning as "innovations think tank."

The University of Hohenheim's partner universities in developing countries are Sokoine University of Agriculture and Technology, Tanzania; Universidad de Costa Rica; and Kasetsart University, Thailand. (Source: Barbel Sagi, University of Hohenheim, June 2009)