PNG , a country full of bright ideas
Papua New Guineans’ flair for innovation has the potential to create new businesses and empower its next generation of entrepreneurs. David James reports.
Papua New Guinea may be a developing country, but its people are highly innovative – often in ways that are very different to innovators in developed economies.
Innovation is also seen as critical by the PNG Government as a way to diversify the economy.
Finding a way to connect PNG’s informal economy to commercial markets is one area where innovation is needed.
Virginia Bruce, chief executive officer and founder of the mentoring consultancy REAL Impact, believes the challenge is to develop an ‘ecosystem’ that bridges the gap between sophisticated commercial markets and PNG’s informal economy.
Her company undertook a project to produce hand-woven bilums in the Southern Highlands. REAL sold them to a hotel group in Spain for use as chairs called ‘hippy chairs’.
“We developed a marketing, PR and social media campaign which was called the Artisans of Papua New Guinea. We asked the artisans if they could make 500 bilums. They had never contemplated that before. But they selforganised: 82 women got together and, within three months, delivered the bilums to Spain.”
Another innovator looking to connect the informal economy to commercial markets is award-winning Sustainable Alluvial
Mining Services (SAMS), whose aim is to revolutionise the small-scale alluvial mining industry in PNG.
Founder of SAMS, Immaculate Javia, has developed a pilot program for Esa’ala district in Milne Bay Province aimed at providing support services to a sector that is largely informal and dispersed, but which involves some 100,000 miners. The goal at the end of the program is to get small-scale miners to export the gold themselves, rather than relying on third parties. “That way, they can bring in the money, which can support what they are doing in their villages. It has the potential to drive rural development if adequately reflected in mining policies, monitored and regulated well, and supported financially by governments.”