One of the missions of the University is to undertake research focusing on knowledge and technology transfer with the country’s priority needs. To this end several young researchers are  engaged in several  research endeavours. Collaborative Research with the main theme of ‘Child and Young people” and capacity bulding activities are under way with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology(NTNU) and the University of Zambia with the fund obtained from NUFU, Norway. Another collaborative research and capacity buliding activitiy in the field of Integrated River Basin Managment (IRBM) has already begun with eight Ethiopian Universities and four Netherlands’ Institutions (Wageningen university, Verji Free Amsterdam University, UNESCO-IHE, META-META) by the financial support of NUFFIC-NPT(The Netherlands). Research and training cooperation is also under way with the University of  Nottingham and Tromso. Dilla University welcomes any institution and university both Domestic and Foreign to work together in a wide field of areas. Some of the priority areas of research in the University are indigenous knowledge, biodiversity, land resource managment, Children and young people, culture and language, climate change adaptation, horticultural crops, range land managment, integrated pest managment, land cover change research, etc.