FROM WHERE I STAND: Development must be done with us, not to us

Nov 30, 2025 Features / Columnists, News

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By Janelle A.N Persaud

(Kaieteur News) – Some of you might recall my encounter with a homeless man I later came to know as Uncle Andrew. I met him while walking one morning on the seawall. He told me of his life and when I offered to help him reconnect with family, I had good intentions. But I didn’t pause to ask the right questions. I simply leaped into action because I was in a position to “help”. When we got to his hometown, I discovered he had some unresolved legal issues, and in trying to help, I ended up putting him in a more vulnerable situation.

That moment taught a lesson that lingers, even as I think of policy and development. I now appreciate that help offered without understanding context can be harmful and good intentions are not a substitute for informed and respectful engagement.

I think of it now as I observe recent development initiatives sweeping parts of Guyana.

Earlier this month, the government announced that Tiger Bay is set to become Georgetown’s first “model neighbourhood,” under its Rescue Georgetown Plan. There were walk-abouts, interactions with residents, and a commitment to establish what was called a “neighbourhood of love.” The initiative, according to media reports, would be “owned by the people”. This all sounds very encouraging as it represents a shift away from the top-down approach. But it invites deeper questions: How is ownership defined? Who gets to decide what changes are made and how? Will residents be co-designers of these initiatives or just recipients of decisions made elsewhere?

I read that three plots of land have already been allocated for a futsal and basketball facility and while sport can play a powerful role in youth development, I wonder: how was that particular intervention decided on? Do we know how many young people live in the area, have dropped out of school, and are unemployed or struggling with other social challenges? What are the residents themselves asking for and to what extent do these decisions reflect their lived realities-or are these merely our ideas of what development should look like?

To be clear, I’m not dismissing the new efforts. Maybe the Tiger Bay model will get it right. Perhaps there are meaningful consultations already underway that we don’t know about. If so, that’s good news.

Nonetheless, I find myself returning to the words of Frantz Fanon, who warned that “imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land and from our minds.” Even after political independence, many postcolonial states continue to adopt top-down models of governance and development that mimicked their colonisers.

Arturo Escobar deepens this argument by suggesting that “development” itself is not a neutral concept. It has often been a system of ideas, institutions, and interventions imposed from above; what he calls a “regime of representation” that defines poor people as passive beneficiaries rather than active subjects of change.

We see remnants of this in Guyana’s own trajectory. The Carter Centre helped the recently expired 10-year National Development Strategy. Foreign companies with the ability to influence the pace and structure of local economic transformation. Even well-meaning leaders may default to inherited systems; unwittingly continuing the cycle of doing development to people instead of with them.

This isn’t a partisan critique. It is a structural issue that transcends governments.

Burnham’s post-independence push for self-reliance, cooperativism and cultural reclamation; however controversial, was an early attempt to break away from the development paradigms handed down by external powers. The Cooperative Republic model, the promotion of Guyanese history and cultural studies in schools and even the nationalisation of key industries were framed as part of an effort to allow Guyanese the agency to define progress on our own terms. While arguably imperfect, the underlying pulse is worth revisiting.

That’s not to say, we haven’t tried since. I’ve seen moments where President Ali and VP Jagdeo, on the international stage, defended Guyana’s right to develop its oil and gas resources in the face of growing global pressure to reduce fossil fuel reliance. They both unapologetically declared that Guyana will develop its oil, while pointing out the hypocrisy of now wealthy nations that have long benefitted from their own resource extraction and are attempting to curtail others from doing the same. These acts of resistance, however symbolic, suggest that the desire to define our own path remains alive. Still, true self-determination is not simply a function of bold speeches or nationalist slogans. It requires a confrontation of some difficult questions; which of the systems we inherited continue to bind us? Where have we internalised models that don’t serve us? Which policies and postures must we begin to chip away, bit by bit, to free ourselves?

I’m not being naive. I’m fully aware that such a level of self-determination is not costless. Many of the structures that hold us in place, whether loan agreements, grant obligations or indeed international financial institutions, limit the extent to which we can act freely. While breaking from these structures won’t be easy, we must be willing to first see them and name them. And importantly, we must be honest about the fact that even as we govern ourselves, we often continue to play by the rules that were never made for us.

Unless, of course, some already do see them and choose to preserve them. Because the uncomfortable truth is that these, though colonial in origin, now possibly serve new masters. Perhaps, a new elite has emerged, clustered around the fast-growing economy, political proximity and access to state power. In this framing, development becomes less about dismantling inherited injustice and more a matter of redistributing its benefits to a different class of beneficiaries. And so the system survives not necessarily because we are blind to it, but because some are deeply invested to keep it intact.

In any case, development that truly transforms lives must begin with the people it claims to serve by listening with humility and the kind of posture that asks the right questions before it acts.

From where I stand, that’s the only kind of progress that matters. Just like Uncle Andrew, many of our citizens are navigating hidden complexities. Before we rush in with solutions, we would do well to ask first: What does help look like, for you?

And then perhaps, we might begin to build a truly inclusive path forward.

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• Development, Frantz Fanon, Janelle Persaud, Rescue Georgetown

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