Infrastructure is central to Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) long-term development and economic growth.
Through Australia and PNG’s Development Partnership Plan, Australia is working with the Government of PNG and local partners to invest in infrastructure that supports communities, strengthens essential services and creates opportunities for sustainable economic development.
At least half of Australia’s development assistance supports infrastructure, reflecting Papua New Guinea’s priorities. This investment covers education, health, law and justice, agriculture, water, power, telecommunications, aviation, roads and ports.
The Bougainville Partnership
The Australia PNG Subnational Program delivers infrastructure as part of broader support for governance and service delivery in PNG through four programs:
- Bougainville Partnership
- Kokoda Initiative Partnership
- Western Province Partnership and the
- Subnational Governance Implementation Program.
Supporting a peaceful and prosperous Bougainville is a key part of Australia’s assistance to PNG. The Bougainville Partnership is designed to meet the region’s needs -- to increase economic growth, build stronger communities, and develop sustainable infrastructure.
Close community consultation
Stan Basiou has spent most of his professional life working in Bougainville. As a Short-term Adviser for the Bougainville Partnership, based in the capital, Buka, he understands the region and its diverse communities.
“Over the years, I’ve learnt about each of the region’s 33 communities and how they relate and respond to development issues. This awareness has been essential in the success of implementing our infrastructure projects, especially given that across most of Bougainville, land is held under customary ownership, meaning extensive consultation and coordination is required,” explains Stan.
“This includes working closely with traditional landowners and formalising agreements to enable community projects, such as community government infrastructure, water storage hubs, and community market structures to be constructed on their land.”
The key to success – local contractors
Stan, an infrastructure adviser on the Bougainville Partnership, has worked at Abt for 10 years. He says the infrastructure projects Abt delivers in Bougainville are successfully addressing rural communities’ basic needs thanks to “a tangible transfer of knowledge and capacity building of young men and women of Bougainville.”
Stan believes hiring local contractors and workers is essential for successful projects and long-term development in Bougainville.
“In the last five years, our most successful contractors have been young people with technical and business qualifications from education and training institutions in PNG. We started them off with smaller projects and graduated them to larger infrastructure once they’d developed the necessary skills and experience,” says Stan.
“We hire at least 10 people from the local community as volunteers/labourers and tradespeople in each of our infrastructure projects. We now have five local contractors who are able to undertake large infrastructure projects, including multi-million kina projects that provide employment for other tradespeople and youth. This is the biggest success with our infrastructure projects, and so I’m happy to see that Abt is assisting young entrepreneurs to develop their businesses to the next level.”
Local ownership and community pride
Promoting social inclusion and development opportunities is a key goal of the Bougainville Partnership. Stan highlights the importance of local involvement and ownership.
“Infrastructure projects that involve local workers provide vital opportunities for work, training and capacity building, and the community takes real pride in infrastructure they are involved in constructing.”
Stan notes that many infrastructure projects in Bougainville rely on the support of local communities to succeed.
“Local people play a key role in getting materials to project sites for all of our infrastructure projects,” says Stan, who recalls one especially challenging project involving the delivery of water catchment to a school in the Wakunai District in Central Bougainville.
“The school is situated on a ridge about 1,000m above sea level and approximately 10km inland. The local community took charge of all the logistics work, organising their cooperative tractor to move the materials. They also provided the volunteers and contractor staff with food and shelter for the duration of the three-week construction period.”
A rewarding role
Having worked as a long-term Infrastructure Adviser for a decade, Stan has now opted to stay on at Abt as a Short-term Adviser, focusing on projects with complex community coordination needs.
“I’m so happy to see younger staff working on community coordination issues for Abt Community projects and doing exceptionally well. I’m so grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to play a role in the development of Bougainville for the last 25 years; the work has been incredibly rewarding.”
Learn more about Abt’s infrastructure programs here.