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Good practice Imported

EU-STREIT PNG Digital Resource Centres — Solar ICT Hubs Connecting Sepik Smallholder Farmers to Global Markets

Papua New Guinea · Maprik · See the Papua New Guinea profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 10% 96/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Under the EU-funded STREIT PNG Programme, ITU and FAO built five solar-powered digital resource centres across East and West Sepik provinces (2023-2024), reaching 1,500+ students and cocoa, vanilla and fishery farmer groups with ICT and e-commerce training.

5
Digital Resource Centres established (2023-2024)
1,500+
Students and farmer-group members served (by mid-2024)

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and FAO, with Papua New Guinea's National ICT Authority, under the EU-STREIT PNG Programme
Period
2023-2024
Keywords
rural digital skills, agri e-commerce, connectivity infrastructure

Context

The EU-STREIT PNG Programme — the EU's largest grant-funded initiative in the Pacific — is implemented jointly by FAO, ILO, ITU, UNCDF and UNDP to build rural enterprise and connectivity in Papua New Guinea's East and West Sepik provinces, an area with very limited ICT access.

Activities

ITU worked with FAO and PNG's National ICT Authority to establish five solar-powered Digital Resource Centres (Wewak, Wosera, Vanimo, Aitape and Maprik, 2023-2024), delivering a 'Digital Skills and E-commerce Basics' curriculum to students and cocoa, vanilla and fishery farmer groups.

Results

By mid-2024 the five centres served more than 1,500 students plus numerous farmers' groups; a cited concrete outcome is young entrepreneurs (including the Mongs AgTrade group) building e-marketplace listings and exporting vanilla to New Zealand, the US and Australia.

Conclusions

No EU funding amount specific to the resource centres is disclosed in public reporting, and benefits described so far are concentrated among lead farmers and youth entrepreneurs rather than measured community-wide impact.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Part of the wider EU-STREIT PNG programme; centre-specific cost not disclosed.
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Four centres reported August 2023; fifth added by 2024.
Staffing & skills
ITU, FAO, PNG National ICT Authority

Conditions for success

  • Solar power enabling connectivity in an area with very limited ICT access
  • Business plans intended to cover running costs through ongoing fees and services

Common failure modes

  • No EU funding amount specific to the centres disclosed
  • Benefits concentrated among lead farmers and youth entrepreneurs, not measured community-wide

Commonly funded by

European Urban Initiative

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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