For generations, Guyanese have believed that prosperity begins with a good job. Go to school, get hired, work hard, collect your salary, and if you’re fortunate, retire with a pension. For many families, that path provided stability. There is still dignity in honest employment, and our country will always need skilled teachers, nurses, engineers, police officers and public servants.
But if we are honest with ourselves, that path alone is no longer enough.
Thousands of educated young Guyanese are entering a rapidly growing economy, yet many still struggle to find opportunities that match their ambitions. Others dream of starting businesses but quickly discover that Guyana’s market is small, competition can be uneven, and too many opportunities seem tied to who you know rather than what you can do.
I believe there is another path, one that has very little to do with politics, government contracts or waiting for someone to give you an opportunity.
It begins with earning your first US$1,000. Not from a government ministry. Not from a large contractor. Not by migrating. From right here in Guyana.That first US$1,000 may come from a customer in New York, Toronto, London, Barbados or Trinidad. It may come from designing a website, tutoring a student, building an AI chatbot, managing social media, editing videos, keeping books for a small business or solving a problem for someone thousands of miles away.
The amount itself is almost irrelevant. What matters is what it proves. It proves that your market is no longer limited to 800,000 people. It proves that someone who has never met you is willing to pay for your knowledge, your creativity or your skills. It proves that you do not have to wait for Guyana’s economy to become more competitive before you begin building wealth.
For years I have written that one of Guyana’s biggest economic challenges is not a lack of talent. It is the size of our market. We have brilliant people. We have ambitious young entrepreneurs. We have an English-speaking population. We are now one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Yet thousands of businesses are still competing for the same relatively small customer base.
That is why I continue to argue that Guyana must become an exporter, not only of oil, rice, sugar, gold and timber, but of knowledge, technology, education and professional services. The internet has made that possible in a way that simply did not exist twenty years ago.
Earlier in my career, while working in the technology industry in corporate America, I watched young people teach themselves programming, networking and web development. Many had little formal education, yet they were earning salaries that would have seemed unimaginable to most Guyanese at the time. Long before artificial intelligence, I realized something that has stayed with me ever since: knowledge travels. Geography does not have to define opportunity.
Today, that opportunity has become even greater. Artificial intelligence has reduced the cost of starting many businesses to almost nothing. One person with a laptop can now accomplish work that once required an entire office. Research that once took days can take minutes. Marketing materials that once required agencies can now be produced by individuals. Software can be built faster. Businesses around the world are actively looking for people who can help them become more productive.
Meanwhile, Guyana has advantages that we rarely talk about. We speak English. We operate in a time zone that aligns closely with North America. We understand Western business culture. We have a large diaspora with business connections throughout the world. Those are not small advantages. They are competitive advantages.
The challenge is that too many of us are still looking inward when we should be looking outward. Instead of asking, “Who in Guyana might buy my product?” we should increasingly be asking, “Who in the world has this problem, and how can I solve it?” That is the mindset that transforms a small market into a global one.