A Road, a Border, and Development in New Guinea

Abstract

A road being built in north-western Western Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG), addresses local desires for mobility, for development, and for establishing materially beneficial relationships with people living west of the border in the Indonesian province of South Papua. This road is explicitly intended to reach beyond the nation and, like all routes to border-crossings, exposes differences even as it connects. On the Indonesian side a new sealed road reaches the border at Yetetkun, which is being established as a third official Indonesia–PNG cross-border post. More resources are committed to the Indonesian project than to the PNG project, a difference that is materially apparent at the border. The potential exists that the construction of roads and cross-border posts of these kinds, in combination with triggers arising elsewhere in PNG, may fuel persistent dissatisfactions within Western Province and tempt realignment to the west.