Our new project with the GIZ started in in 2021: Digital4jobs. The main objective of the project and the related research activities is to empirically test and investigate how the developed measures can contribute to technological empowerment and bottom-up economic development, evaluating their social, ecological and economic impact. Throughout the project, we will develop and build machines along the concept of OSAT and promote access, knowledge and skills how to use new digital fabrication technologies and derive related business models/ business cases within so-called OpenLabs (i.e. open production sites) in the neighboring local industrial sectors. Since this is a relatively new phenomenon, there is a lack of adequate empirical case studies and best-practice examples in this domain. 

Besides our existing project in collaboration with universities in Tunis, Monastir and Ksar Hellal, where we will build a pilot lab in the field of textile industry in collaboration with MFC Pole Monastir-El Fejja, our research activities would profit from additional regional and sectoral application contexts. It would allow us to further test and scientifically evaluate our concepts in different sectoral, regional and socio-economic environments. This would lead to a higher degree of empirical validation as well as a broader network and outreach of the concept of OSAT and Open Production Spaces as places of innovation, technological learning and incubation.