With its 150 million euros dedicated to supporting sustainable development around the globe, the CLIENT II funding programme has partnership for the SDGs at its core. With each grant, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports joint research and development of sustainable solutions between Germany and the Global South. Through CLIENT II, German universities, research institutes and business have been able to build partnerships with their counterparts in 32 countries across Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. The regional CLIENT II offices in central Asia (CASIB), Vietnam and China have been a key partner in this bilateral cooperation, for example, by networking with local stakeholders, providing consultation on application and implementing the results. 

Many CLIENT II projects are also a collaboration between different academic disciplines, with this interdisciplinary approach being crucial to the successful uptake of the solutions they develop on the ground. For example, the project EnerSHelF - Energy Supply for Healthcare Facilities in Ghana combined detailed analysis of governance structures and technical aspects to achieve greater reliability in the planning, design and control of the renewable energy systems they developed. 

These joint research and development projects have also given rise to fruitful new partnerships between science and the private sector, helping to bring solutions to the stage where they can be scalable and commercially viable. In the project KASHEMP, for example, industrial players in Kazakhstan took a keen interest in high-quality textile hemp fibres developed by the project as a more sustainable alternative to cotton . At the same time, the programme is helping to strengthen the dialogue between science and policy. The Science-Policy Interface project ensures that the results become part of the international environmental dialogue by organising side events at major conferences.

Throughout the programme, CLIENT II projects have also had the chance to exchange and learn from each other at the CLIENT conferences, regular regional exchanges, webinars and workshops organised by the Client2Works accompanying project, creating fertile ground for more partnerships in the future.

With all of this in mind, the CLIENT II funding programme has made a clear contribution to SDG 17, in particular the Targets 17.6: Knowledge Sharing and Cooperation for Access to Science, Technology and Innovation, which aims to “enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms” and Target 17.7: Promote Sustainable Technologies to Developing Countries, which aims to “promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to countries of the Global South on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed” (source).