By Karen Abrams, MBA IT Consultant
As Guyana’s sugar, bauxite and rice industries continue to struggle under the weight of competition and global pricing pressures, our local economy and therefore citizens will continue to feel the direct hit as less revenue is available to pay for improved government services and development projects. Less revenue means that there can be no massive undertaking of projects to fix roads, water, schools, healthcare or any of the larger projects that can have an impact on job creation or quality of life improvements for our citizens, without significantly adding to our national debt.
History has made it clear that Guyana must diversify her economy and in addition to oil production, must prepare her young people to provide goods and services for the rest of the world, using the tools of technology. Citizens of Guyana must take the strategic position that never again must Guyana be overwhelmingly dependent on any one industry for her future economic development. Those young people who have no institutional memory of this lesson in Guyana only need look to our neighbour Venezuela to observe the consequence of national dependence on one industry.
While the more optimistic among us await the arrival of oil production in Guyana and view it as a panacea for all that ails the struggling economy, others understand that for oil production revenues to benefit the masses, steps much be taken now to put the IT infrastructure in place to ensure transparency and smart investment in Guyana’s human resources. Without vigorous steps to build out Guyana’s education and IT infrastructure in both the public and private sector, Guyana risks the curse of low oil prices that has befallen countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia, Iraq and Saudia Arabia. These are countries where oil revenues have flowed into the bank accounts of a cabal of elites whose lifestyles reflect obscene wealth, while the masses suffer with poor educational systems, sadly dysfunctional healthcare systems, degradation of the nation’s physical infrastructure, woefully incomplete and under-developed water and sewage systems and a huge population of unemployed youth who feel marginalized and disaffected and who opt to turn to crime to survive or to enrich themselves. Having worked in the world of corporate technology for more than 15 years and having been the administrator of several STEM programmes targeting school-aged students in both Guyana and the United States, I can say unequivocally that our Guyanese youth are no less smart or capable—than others around the world—of creating and innovating solutions for problems in Guyana, the Caribbean region and elsewhere. The difference in achievement, I believe, is based on access to opportunity and support from select school systems that encourage student empowerment, innovation and creativity while also focusing on delivering excellence in Arts, Math and Science education.
These factors, coupled with home, school and community environments that have high expectations of students, that embrace risk and failure as part of the learning process, and that encourage self-confidence and a willingness to forego immediate gratification in the pursuit of excellence, produce a stream of young innovators around the world who are creating millions of jobs and revolutionizing how work, fun, communication and living are being redesigned. Their achievements are everywhere and those who are not adequately prepared to join the ranks of the global innovators, who use technology to innovate and solve problems, will continue to become their slavish consumers using technology, not as tools for development but as a source of entertainment and therefore only contribute to revenue generation for global technology giants.
Guyana has a unique opportunity right now to prepare her majority youth population for the next generation of development which is rapidly approaching. We can act now and be prepared to take advantage of future lucrative opportunities or allow strategic gatekeepers to strangle development by opening doors and gates exclusively to friends or only slightly to the Guyanese in Guyana and around the world who are ready and prepared to immediately contribute to the development of Guyana and her human resources.
Guyanese gatekeepers must develop a big vision for the future and be unafraid to fling wide open the doors of opportunity to the community of innovators waiting to contribute to the development of Guyana, for it will be these people, representing a wide variety of industries, who will drive the future creation of jobs and economic development of Guyana.
