When this project got cracking nearly seven years ago, there were only eight people in an empty place. However, as time has rolled on it has rapidly grown into a stronghold of Panama's scientific development.

Ciudad del Saber (Knowledge City) is an international space, a platform upon which Panama launches itself and lures higher-level academic program, research centers, a techno-park that harbors little more than four dozen high-tech companies, and has become home to major international organizations and NGOs linked to social and human development.

In an exclusive conversation with Excellencies magazine, Ciudad del Saber Foundation's executive director Jorge Arosemena Roman remembers how the enclave used to be a military base for quite a number of years and the HQs of the U.S. Army's Southern Command.

«The Panamanian State decided to give this place a new lease on life,« he recalls, «and launched the idea of trading troops and weapons for students, researchers, businesspeople, books and thoughts. This idea was immediately supported by UNESCO, the European Union, the Inter American Development Bank (BID), the World Bank and Canada's International Cooperation Agency.

EXPANSION PROJECT Today, this city of wisdom boasts some 30 academic programs, including research centers, human resources formation programs, as many as fifty companied lodged at the techno-park -a company incubator that has already churned out a number of highly successful enterprises and it now has 15 others in the oven. In the same breath, Ciudad del Saber is home to over 30 international organizations and NGOs.

Are we in a position to say that Ciudad del Saber is now blessed by international recognition?, we asked.

«Ciudad del Saber was designed by the UN on May 18, 2006 as the first-ever interagency hub in the Americas. This means that we're currently hosting the regional offices for Latin America of UNICEF, the World Food Program, the United Nations Environmental Program, the United Nations Development Program, the Latin America HIV-AIDS Prevention Program, plus UN regional agencies for refugees, humanitarian issues and all of the UN administrative and logistical support for Latin America, and «What's an NGO« International Plan, designed for poor kids, regional office for Latin America. «We're also directly linked by means of official agreements with all major colleges and universities, research centers, entrepreneurial guilds, and we host the nation's Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Forensic Medicine Institute, the DNA labs featuring cutting-edge technology, and Panama's Institute of Farming and Livestock.

«This is a cluster in which the common denominator is knowledge and its application for the sake of improving living conditions for our people, not only in Panama but also across the entire region and all of mankind together.