Northern Province
Underdeveloped eastern province without major resources, where subsistence livelihoods persist and Kokoda Track's eastern terminus provides modest tourism.
Northern Province faces the Solomon Sea where coastal communities fish and trade while interior populations maintain subsistence livelihoods in one of PNG's least developed territories. Popondetta, the provincial capital, serves as administrative center without significant commercial or industrial activity that would generate formal employment.
The province lacks the resource extraction that transforms other PNG territories—no major mines, no LNG operations, no palm oil plantations at scale that West New Britain hosts. This creates an economy oriented toward subsistence agriculture and local markets rather than export commodity production.
The Kokoda Track's eastern terminus lies in Northern Province, creating some trekking tourism that generates employment for local guides and porters. The wartime legacy—Japanese landing sites, battle locations, aircraft wrecks—provides heritage significance that adventure tourism references.
By 2026, expect limited development absent resource discovery or agricultural transformation, subsistence patterns continuing for communities without market integration, and Popondetta remaining a modest administrative center without economic dynamism. Northern Province demonstrates how PNG territories without extractive resources or strategic position experience underdevelopment that colonial and post-colonial eras have not remedied.