Written by 
An earlier version of this blog was published in The Conversation. After publication, the authors received valuable feedback which is incorporated into the revised version below. There was so much money sloshing around in Bougainville during 2024 that the stores ran short of goods and people could be found partying until dawn. The region’s economy […]
This is our final blog for the year. We’ll start up again from 6 January 2025. The editorial team of Robin Davies, Amita Monterola, Jackie Hanafie and Sadhana Sen would like to thank everyone who has written for, read, commented on, promoted and supported the Devpolicy Blog in 2024. We would also like to thank […]
Understanding sub-national governance in Papua New Guinea is never easy as the data is hard to come by. To address this, I created the Provincial Budget Database earlier this year to track subnational fiscal data back to 2007. I have now expanded the database. This post reveals some of what we can learn from the […]
On 30 November 2024, Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te embarked on a week-long visit to Taiwan’s three Pacific diplomatic allies: Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau. During the trip, Lai made a transit stop in Hawai‘i on the way to Marshall Islands and another transit stop in Guam between visits to Tuvalu and Palau. Because China currently […]
One of the challenges associated with tackling the slowly evolving and interlinked crises associated with climate change is that there are few visible milestones to mark their dismal progress and attract the necessary attention of the development community, let alone the broader public. In October 2024, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Pacific Office provided, without […]
2024 Pacific Labour Mobility Annual Meeting wrap – Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre
This year’s Pacific Labour Mobility Annual Meeting (PLMAM), held under the banner “Collectively Building Resilience”, took place in Brisbane from 11 to 14 November 2024. Organised by the PACER Plus Implementation Unit (PPIU), the event, which has become the pre-eminent regional meeting on labour mobility, attracted more than 350 delegates from around the region, including […]
Femili PNG is a Papua New Guinean NGO that runs family and sexual violence case management centres. Its mission is to provide care, support and change. It aims to provide a holistic approach and intervention through the process of case management to help survivors of family and sexual violence, child abuse and sorcery-accusation-related violence have […]
In a highly anticipated session of the Tongan parliament to debate and vote on the second vote of no confidence (VONC) in Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni Hu’akavameiliku and the Cabinet, Hu’akavameiliku surprised everyone by announcing his resignation even before the actual debate had begun. The session began with the Speaker, Lord Fakafanua, announcing the procedure […]
Transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of any effective government program. I am proud to announce the launch of AusDevPortal — a new, online transparency portal dedicated to Australia’s international development work. This transparency uplift is part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that every dollar of development funding contributes to the outcomes that Australia […]
At the 2024 PNG Update, the PNG Prime Minister James Marape went to great lengths to argue that political stability is a prerequisite for economic development. He referenced the high economic growth that started in the 2000s under the late Prime Minister Michael Somare as the basis of political stability. While the growth did coincide […]