TIL : Niue | johan.sh

While playing OEC Tradle, I discovered the “Self Governing territory” of Niue. From wikipedia :

Niue is a self-governing state in free association with New Zealand, and New Zealand conducts most diplomatic relations on its behalf.

The exports overview is rather interesting :

5% of coins in exportations?

Looking deeper, it’s due to its currency : the Niue dollar. Their currency is mainly used to issue collector coins

I always found crazy that we can run a country with only few hundreds people (thinking about security, justice, utilities etc..)

For a population of about 2000 today, they even had an airlines in the 90s! : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niue_Airline
They even have street view on google maps : somebody (not gros google) found the time to go around the island with their car to capture the main roads

They decided to develop tourism and one of the direction would be Astronomy : it became the world first Dark Sky Country by maintaining standard of light development and keeps light pollution limited. IT wise, it’s interesting to see that :

They were first country in the world to provide state-funded wireless internet to all inhabitants.
They are pushing students to have computers : One Laptop per Child project reached 100% coverage there
OpenBTS project was able to use this island as location test
All villages were connected to fiber in 2015
Their Telecom company even has visitor plans

All above can be seen as easy when we are only talking about 14 villages / 2k peoples, but this still need individuals that are willing to spend energy to make things move forward, which amaze me. Last thing I discovered : the Niue Yatch Club ! I love their presentation :

Niue Yacht Club is known as the “Biggest Little Yacht Club in the World - where no one owns a yacht or knows how to sail!”

Now I might think about something else when people would mention NYC :D