Development cooperation is changing rapidly. Development assistance from members of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD-DAC) is becoming less important. There are now numerous other sources of development assistance: non-DAC donors, such as China and India; philanthropic organisations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and new ‘social impact investors’, such as the Shell Foundation and the Acumen Fund.

This report reviews the experience of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in managing these non-traditional development assistance (NTDA) flows, as part of the broader Overseas Development Institute (ODI) project ‘The age of choice: How are developing countries managing the new aid landscape?’ (see Greenhill et al., 2013). By NTDA, we mean cross-border sources of finance provided to developing countries for public or philanthropic purposes, which have an element of concessionality but are not ‘traditional’ bilateral or multilateral official development assistance (ODA). The category of ‘non-traditional providers’ (NTPs) includes non-DAC donors, climate finance, philanthropic organisations, social impact investors and global health funds.