Building the Ecosystem Guyana needs for innovation, inclusion and efficient development

Apr 26, 2026 Features / Columnists, News

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By Dr. Karen Abrams

(Kaieteur News) – Two years ago, a young Guyanese innovator named Maryam Bacchus looked around her community and saw a problem that many adults had learned to complain about but not solve. Trash disposal, illegal dumping and littering were not abstract environmental issues. They were visible, persistent, community-level problems affecting public health, civic pride, drainage, flooding, tourism and the dignity of everyday life.

Maryam did what innovators do. She observed. She asked questions. She tried to understand the scope of the problem. She researched the relevant data. She studied possible solutions. Then she spent months building an app called Litta Reporta, a citizen-reporting tool designed to allow ordinary people to document littering, identify problem areas, report waste disposal issues, and help communities and agencies respond with better information.

That is innovation.

To be clear, I have had no conversation with Maryam about the proceeding, I am informed based on observation and recollection and a personal knowledge of the challenges women in STEM face and the challenges I have had to navigate in my 10 years working in Guyana’s immature innovation ecosystem.

Maryam’s story is also not only about a young woman coding an app. It is essentially about a young person seeing a national problem, refusing to accept it as normal, gathering information, designing a solution, and investing months in attempting to place technology in the service of public good.

I do not know every detail of Maryam’s journey. I do not know which public agencies or private companies were approached, which partnerships were sought, or which doors opened and which doors closed. But I know this; the Maryam Bacchusses of Guyana are exactly who this country needs.

And that is why her story matters so much now.

Two years after Maryam completed Litta Reporta, the Environmental Protection Agency has promoted a litter reporting platform, Clean592, described publicly as a web-based litter reporting application that allows citizens to report littering. The EPA’s e-services platform also now allows citizens to report pollution or environmental damage and track complaints by reference number. The Government has also announced renewed efforts to activate and strengthen litter laws, including penalties and enforcement mechanisms under long-standing regulations.

That is a good thing. Guyana needs modern environmental reporting systems. We need stronger enforcement. We need citizen participation. We need technology to make public services more responsive.

But we must also ask a deeper question. When a young Guyanese has already identified the same problem, built a similar solution, and demonstrated the very thinking we say we want from our youth, do we simply move past her? Or do we bring her in?

Hopefully, any oversight will be rectified, and the EPA will engage Maryam, not only to leverage her app, but to leverage her thinking, her creativity, her research, her brilliance, her courage, and her vision for that space. Because the most valuable thing Maryam built was not only an app. She built proof that young Guyanese can see local problems clearly and imagine practical solutions.

That is the beginning of an innovation ecosystem.

I know this because I have lived it.

In 2014, my four children were watching the stories of citizens being shot by police officers in the United States. These incidents were creating national protests, fear, anger and division. My husband and I talked with them often about what they were seeing. Eventually, we encouraged them to use the knowledge and confidence they had gained from their STEM club experience to build something useful.

They created an app called FIVE-O, designed to help citizens document interactions with police officers. The app went viral in the United States. They were interviewed by more than 50 national and international media companies. They were invited to present at The Hague in the Netherlands, through the Innovating Justice program, and they won 22,000 Euros.

But money was not the most important outcome.

The most important outcome was that their work was noticed by Silicon Valley billionaire Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia Horowitz, who invited them to visit Silicon Valley companies. They met CEOs. They visited Facebook. They formed relationships that changed how they saw themselves and what they believed was possible.

That experience helped open doors to top universities, including Stanford, Cornell, NYU and Boston University. Today, all four are innovators in their own fields.

That is what an ecosystem does. It does not merely admire talent after the world validates it. It identifies talent early. It protects it. It introduces it to mentors. It connects it to institutions. It gives it room to fail, revise and grow. It surrounds young people with people who say, “This idea matters. Let us help you take it further.”

The United States is not perfect. Bias exists. Inequality exists. Access is uneven. But one thing the United States has understood better than many countries is that talent is a national asset. If a young person is exceptional at coding, robotics, music, athletics, science, business or design, there is often a pathway somewhere to nurture that talent. A school, a competition, a foundation, an accelerator, a university, a mentor, a journalist, a philanthropist or an investor may step forward and help convert promise into opportunity.

Guyana must now make that same decision deliberately.

We are at a crossroads. Oil revenue has changed the scale of our economy. Reuters reported that Guyana’s economy was projected to grow by 16.2 percent in 2026, after 19.3 percent growth in 2025, with oil and gas continuing to drive expansion. The report also noted that the non-oil sector grew by 14.3 percent in 2025. These numbers are extraordinary. But national wealth alone does not create national innovation.

Innovation requires an ecosystem.

Research has been saying this for years. A major empirical study by Fagerberg and Srholec, using data from 115 countries, found that innovation systems and governance are especially important for economic development. In other words, countries do not become developed simply because they have capital. They become developed when they build capabilities, institutions, knowledge systems and governance structures that allow people to turn ideas into value.

The World Bank’s work on entrepreneurial ecosystems makes a similar point. It argues that strong ecosystems require human capital, managerial capability, knowledge, entrepreneur talent, public programs, enabling organizations and local diagnostics that identify where the real gaps are. These factors are structural. They take investment, time and coordination to mature.

This is where Guyana must be careful.

We cannot confuse buildings with ecosystems.

A building can house innovation, but a building is not innovation. A lab can support innovation, but a lab is not an ecosystem. A hackathon can excite young people, but a hackathon without follow-up can become little more than a photo opportunity. A grant can help, but a grant without mentorship, procurement access, institutional respect and long-term support may die quietly after the launch.

A true innovation ecosystem has many moving parts. It includes schools that teach children to identify problems and build solutions. It includes universities that support research and commercialization. It includes government agencies willing to partner with young innovators instead of treating them as outsiders. It includes private companies willing to pilot local solutions. It includes investors willing to take intelligent risks. It includes media willing to celebrate serious innovation, not only entertainment and politics. It includes laws and procurement systems that are fair, transparent and accessible to small local innovators.

That is the missing muscle Guyana must build.

When a young person builds a litter reporting app, the response should not be polite applause and silence. The response should be a structured pathway; review the prototype, test it in one municipality, connect the innovator to the EPA, the Ministry of Local Government, city councils, community groups, sanitation companies, schools and environmental clubs. Provide technical feedback. Provide data. Provide mentorship. Provide a small innovation grant. Provide legal guidance on intellectual property. Provide a public demonstration opportunity. Provide a procurement pathway if the solution works.

That is how countries convert youthful creativity into national capacity.

And this must be done fairly.

Innovation cannot be reserved for the children of the connected, the wealthy, the politically favored or the already visible. If we build an ecosystem that rewards only proximity to power, we will reproduce the same inequality that has limited Guyana for generations. We will lose the village child who sees a drainage problem. We will lose the Berbice child who designs an agricultural sensor. We will lose the Linden child who builds a mining safety tool. We will lose the Essequibo child who creates a tourism platform. We will lose the hinterland child who imagines a better way to deliver education, health care or emergency communication to remote communities.

Guyana’s innovation ecosystem must be national, not Georgetown-centered. It must be fair, not friends-and-family-driven. It must be open, not guarded by gatekeepers. It must reward problem-solving, not political loyalty.

This is especially important because many of Guyana’s biggest challenges are exactly the kinds of challenges young innovators can help solve. Waste management. Flooding. Agriculture. Road safety. Public health. Education gaps. Tourism. Small business digitization. Citizen reporting. Community security. Renewable energy. Disability access. Indigenous language preservation. Disaster response. Transportation. Government service delivery.

Our children live with these problems every day. They see what adults normalize. They know where systems break down. And when given the tools, they can build solutions that are practical, local and fresh.

But they need an ecosystem that takes them seriously.  Imagine if every promising youth project had a pathway.  To be clear, not every app will become a company. Nine (9) out of 10 fail in the US, but that does not stop the US commitment to innovation. Not every prototype will work. Not every young innovator will become a founder. That is not the point. The point is to build a culture where young people learn that problems are not only to be endured, complained about or politicized. Problems can be studied. Problems can be mapped. Problems can be measured. Problems can be solved.

That mindset may be more valuable than oil.  Oil can build roads, bridges and buildings. Innovation builds people.  Oil can fund development. Innovation sustains it.  Oil can make a country rich. Innovation can make a country capable.

Maryam Bacchus did what we say we want our young people to do. She looked at Guyana, saw a problem, studied it, and built something. The question is whether Guyana has built enough of an ecosystem to receive her gift.

The answer, so far, is not yet.  But we can.

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• Guyana Ecosystem, inclusion, innovation, Karen Abrams, Maryam Bacchus

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