Noefefan Bridge

About

The Noefefan Bridge (Ponte Noefefan, Tetum: Ponte Noefefan) is a two-lane road bridge over the Tono River in the suco of Lifau, a village in Oecusse, the East Timorese exclave on the north western coast of Timor. As of 2017, when the bridge was inaugurated, it was the largest bridge ever built in Timor-Leste. It connects several isolated communities west of the river with Pante Macassar to its east. A World Bank report published in 2016, the year before the bridge was completed, observed that 95% of Oecusse households participating in a survey had expressed dissatisfaction with the state of roads and bridges in that region. However, the East Timorese government development program of which the bridge is a part has not been universally praised, and as of 2018, the paved road over the bridge ended abruptly at the latter's western extremity.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.