The Real World Laboratory Mansôa - Science in the real world and for the real world

The Wilhelm von Humboldt University Institute views itself as an institution that would like to contribute to innovative development work, using the example of local developments in Mansôa. Therefore, the institute focuses its projects and activities on the district town of Mansôa in order to test different scientifically based intervention options here in the form of a "Real World Laboratory" and to develop country-wide development opportunities on the basis of actual projects and entrepreneurial actions. Thus, the Humboldtian educational idea of individual development with simultaneous appropriation of essentially foreign and novel impulses will be implemented in the Mansôa "laboratory" as an actual creative act of creating a new tertium comparationis.

Methodology

The "laboratory" pursues the approach to initiate specific developments in a manageable and scientifically accompanied environment at selected points of the economic and social life in the district town of Mansôa, in order to evaluate their effectiveness according to scientific standards. The focus of the research work is on economic & medical development, infrastructure and educational work. All activities of the research department and the PhD programs will be oriented towards real issues of development work in Guinea-Bissau. The aim is to make innovative and sustainable contributions to the national development policy.