The expansion and consolidation of sustainable international partnerships and networks between countries at different levels of development are essential for achieving the SDGs as part of the 2030 Agenda. This includes, above all, constant exchange and learning from each other, including the training of decision-makers in this area.

The partner institutions of the Université d’Antananarivo in Madagascar, the Universitas Syiah Kuala in Indonesia and the University of Göttingen in Germany already have many years of successful cooperation with different areas of expertise in this field. As part of a DAAD-funded SDG partnership project, there is now a unique opportunity to expand and consolidate these networks within the framework of extensive North-South-South cooperation and to merge them into an effective, development-relevant international network. This enables valuable long-term institutional ties and contributes to achieving the SDGs with the program priorities. Particularly with the understanding that the respective SDGs should not be seen as individual, independent goals, but rather as an overall network of mutually supportive, reinforcing effects, we would like to address synergistic, harmonizing parts of various SDGs with our partnership. Each of the disciplines involved, with their knowledge and skills, is indispensable for overcoming global environmental and health crises, but only by combining common resources through interprofessional cooperation can these crises be overcome in a practical way. However, it is precisely this important interface that is often characterized by deficits. The same applies to the interface between theoretical knowledge/innovations and practical transfer. Due to the focus of the partner institutions’ work in the public health service directly on the population and their needs, as well as the university partners’ university competencies, this joint project is a unique approach to the mutual strengthening of competencies and the implementation of strategies jointly developed within the framework of this project to achieve defined SDG sub-goals.