Public-Private Partnerships in Development : Three Applications in Timor Leste

Timor Leste, the first new nation of the twenty-first century, is a young country facing many of the most challenging problems of underdevelopment: illiteracy, malnutrition, low skills base and high unemployment. It also is on the threshold of facing the potential pitfalls of being a relatively large-scale exporter of oil and gas. Finally independent after centuries of colonialism and decades of occupation, the country’s public and private managers lack experience and skills. These daunting problems are exacerbated by the nation’s decision to re-introduce Portuguese as the official language, even though only a small percentage of the population (and virtually no under-30’s) has any fluency in that language. According to the World Bank (2002), the main challenge facing Timor Leste is how to reconcile a simultaneous existence of acute poverty and severe shortage of human management skills with solid prospects of future flows from the country’s natural resource wealth ...