Although fading into history, some readers may recall Melanesia’s cargo cults – scattered ritualistic island movements that sought to summon material Western goods from supernatural forces.
Prevalent in the wake of the second world war, small groups of devoted followers marched, raised flags, and engaged in activities such as lighting torches to create plane landing strips in the hope of treasured ‘cargo’.
While a curious act of the recent past, its characteristics live on in Melanesia’s most populous nation – Papua New Guinea, where imitation and mimicry is manifesting in government technology and AI aspiration.
Take, for example, PNG’s recent AI Summit, where the PNG government’s bold declarations of ‘AI disruption’ led to broad commitments for sweeping digital uptake ‘from classrooms and hospitals to government procurement and public service jobs’.
It’s fine to have ambition. Indeed, PNG certainly needs it.
Yet such declarations seem misplaced, especially given that the PNG government has recently outlawed Starlink’s PNG operating license. This has been an undeniably bizarre move – one that acknowledges the low orbit technology may perhaps be a bit too ‘disruptive’ to PNG’s duopolised and fragmented communications sector, despite its impressive performance connecting thousands of Papua New Guineans and neighbouring Pacific Islanders.
Like a house with no foundations, attempting to mimic the AI and digital goals of advanced economies meets obvious hurdles if the fundamentals aren’t there. Or if the regulations are ill-adjusted. Successive PNG governments have failed to connect 83 per cent of PNG’s population to electricity, pay teachers on time, conduct a national census (no one actually knows how many people live in PNG), or put a serious dent in public service corruption. AI’s capacity to ‘disrupt’ PNG’s hospital sector seems further unlikely when PNG’s hospitals – and even many government provincial buildings – exist without plumbed water, sanitation or, once again, electricity.
The fundamental digital hurdles aren’t just in PNG’s ‘hard’ infrastructure. There’s a detectable obsession with digital ethics and privacy when there are so many government examples that suggest humility over grand ambition. Port Moresby’s National Data Centre – built in 2018 by Beijing but approved by the PNG government – became riddled with allegations of cyber espionage and security vulnerabilities, according to a DFAT-commissioned report, in addition to being unable to host actual government data or be sufficiently maintained. As the Australian Financial Review noted in 2020, the situation ‘left PNG with a $US53 million debt to the Chinese government, via Exim Bank, and a data centre that is barely operational’.
This creates a reflex tendency from government that further complicates things, where misguided PNG government action via excessive regulation emerges to selectively stall initiatives versus deal with the hard-won fundamentals of consistent power supply or building smooth roads.
Starlink is just the most recent example – its uptake was swift, creating connectivity, reducing cost and bypassing PNG’s geographic fragmentation that has dogged its communications and infrastructure sector for generations. But rather than harness this new innovation, the PNG government – specifically the PNG Ombudsman – has left its future in limbo.
PNG’s enforcement of cyber-crime is another example, which appears to be producing odd punitive outcomes. PNG’s Cybercrime Code Act 2016 was passed to curb online harassment and fraud. But its critics argue that it has become a selective political measure to crack down on freedom of expression and dissent. In this debate PNG is certainly not alone, given that many Western governments are facing a similar tension in balancing expression, speech and digital conduct.
In taking a step back, what do AI and tech fundamentals look like? And how do they apply to PNG?
There are two elements to consider.
First, there needs to be precision around the potency and application of technology to solve PNG’s many problems. To its credit, the PNG Immigration and Citizenship Authority (ICA) has adopted elements of AI in its visa processing that, effectively, saves reams and hours of paperwork. It’s a great example. And, in some ways, it’s ‘inverting’ the PNG Ombudsman’s approach to Starlink – genuinely recognising so-called disruption, moving rapidly, taking down cumbersome processes and reaching an outcome that serves all stakeholders. This needs to be carefully applied to other areas with similar challenges – processing volumes of data, for example, and mitigating handling and processing time.
The second element to consider is deliberate care in the application of technology ‘leapfrogging’ – a common term applied to the introduction of innovative technology in developing nations. Yet, rather unsurprisingly, according to The Economist, leapfrogging consistently falls back on ‘expensive and resource-intensive infrastructure investments like electricity and roads’. Other studies have further highlighted its limitations.
To be clear, the steady application of infrastructure and governance fundamentals is not about keeping PNG from advancing. Yet if the core basics aren’t delivered, or if regulations aren’t balanced right, then the people of PNG – especially those needing technology the most – will be kept waiting. Much like the cargo cults of the past.
Sean Jacobs is the author of A Complicated Inheritance: Papua New Guinea at 50 (Connor Court Publishing, 2026).
