RESEARCH IN NUMBERS 2024
Countries covered by ongoing projects
In 2024, Danida Fellowship Centre supported research project activities in 18 countries, all Danida partner countries with either targeted or expanded development cooperation. Some projects were partnering with two or three countries. The map below shows how many ongoing projects there are in the Danida partner countries. See more about the supported research projects on the Danida Research Portal.
Research projects
Many
Few
None
Gender balance across applications and granted projects
In January of 2025, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected 21 new research projects for funding from the 2024 application round, 14 of which are led by male and seven by female project coordinators. In the 2024 application round, 121 project applications were submitted, 37 by female and 83 by male project leads (one applicant preferred not to disclose their gender).
Across the 21 selected projects, 148 male researchers and 101 female researchers are involved. When calculating the allocated months budgeted for male and female researchers across projects, the male researchers will work 1687 months while female researchers will work 1405 months.
The above figure shows progress towards gender balance compared to previous years. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acknowledged the need for further efforts to be made in this area. New initiatives have therefore been implemented such as more focus on the gender composition of teams in the assessment, and the opportunity to include a co-project lead in the projects.
More applications with a female principal investigator were submitted in the 2024 application round compared to the 2023 application round (31% compared to 27%) but the success rate of applications with a female principal investigator was lower in the 2024 application round compared to the 2023 application round (33% compared to 60%).
Selected research projects by theme
In 2024, the overall theme for the call for applications was “Climate change action and reducing inequity”. All selected research projects from the 2024 application round, therefore, relate to climate change in various ways.
Applicants can choose up to three themes for their project. In addition to the overall theme of climate change, the following themes are the most predominant: Agricultural production, Natural resource management and Food security and safety. The chosen themes for the selected projects from the 2024 application round are distributed as shown below:
Overview of themes in all ongoing projects, incl. the selected projects from the 2024 application round
The diagram shows the occurrence of each theme in ongoing research projects. The focus on climate change in the call for applications is reflected in the occurrence of the “Climate change” theme.
