The great cultural procrastination

Jun 22, 2026 News

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By Khadidja Ba

(Kaieteur News) – Last Thursday’s “Orange Economy State Sector Stakeholders’ Summit” at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre was supposed to be a triumphant unveiling. Instead, it served as a reminder of the yawning chasm between political rhetoric and actual executive execution.

In October 2024, President Irfaan Ali confidently assured the nation that Guyana’s long-awaited national cultural policy would land in January 2025. In his address to the 12th Parliament, the president painted a grand vision: a framework prioritising the integration of culture into national development, preserving our rich heritage, and supercharging our creative industries. He said “There has not been a better time for culture and creativity in Guyana than at present. We can start with a cultural policy. A revised draft framework for a national cultural policy will be put to public consultation in the new year. One that not only focuses on the fundamental issues of integrating culture into development, Heritage preservation and the growth of creative industry, but one that anticipates more recent concerns, like the impact of the digital ecosystem and culture and the dangers and opportunities posed by generative artificial intelligence.”

Yet, here we are in mid-2026. The promised January 2025 deadline has evaporated into the rearview mirror, and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport (MOCYS) has instead delivered a “Path Forward” timeline that merely promises more consultations, more audits, and a draft strategic plan by December 2026. We are not witnessing the launch of an economic engine; we are witnessing an administrative spin cycle.

Ten years, two governments

To understand why this slow rollout is so egregious, one must look at the architects behind it. Presidential Advisor Ruel Johnson has been drawing a taxpayer-funded paycheck to deliver a cohesive cultural policy since 2016, spanning two completely different political administrations. On June 8^th, 2016, GINA (now the Department of Public Information) reported “Consultations to develop and craft a solid cultural policy have been deemed fruitful by Advisor on Cultural Policy, Ruel Johnson. In an interview with the Government Information Agency (GINA), Johnson said a number of consultations were held in 2014 and 2015 to garner input and feedback on citizenship, culture, the environment and religion so as to properly frame the cultural policy. “The feedback was fruitful enough for me to be able to define what you call a cultural development agenda which was absent from previous manifestos cultural policy,” he explained. According to Johnson, the cultural development agenda would play a critical role in the crafting of the cultural policy and this would give Guyana an edge over other countries. “I haven’t seen any natural cultural policy from the ones that I perused that have a specific complement that deals with cultural development in a direct way,” he explained.”

A decade is an eternity in national development. In ten years, empires rise and fall, global streaming platforms reshape human consciousness, and entire creative ecosystems are born. Yet, after ten years of cross-administration incubation, what did Guyana’s creative sector get last Thursday?

• A South African Case Study: Pages of data celebrating how Netflix invested $125 million in South Africa between 2016 and 2022.
• The Jamaican Roadmap: A play-by-play breakdown of Jamaica’s 2021 “Situational Analysis” and their 2025 Green Paper.

While comparative analysis is a vital part of policy drafting, using a decade’s worth of preparation time to present a powerpoint presentation of other countries’ successes is borderline insulting to Guyanese creatives. Our local artists, filmmakers, and indigenous craftspeople do not need to be told how well Netflix did in Johannesburg; they need to know how the government intends to protect their intellectual property in Georgetown.

The “path forward” or a step backward?

The proposed timeline exposes what could be referred to as a complete lack of urgency. According to the framework, the actual implementation of the Creative Industries Strategic Plan won’t even begin until 2027 at the earliest, given the legislative reviews and National Assembly oversight scheduled for late 2026. The reality is, a child who entered primary school when this cultural policy was first commissioned in 2016 is now preparing to sit the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC) . The policy is still in the “stakeholder engagement” phase.

Fairness dictates we acknowledge that the core pillars presented, National Development Centrality, International Integration, Resilience, Integrity, and Equity, are theoretically sound. The inclusion of a proposed “Creative Industries Development Commission” and tax waivers under the GRA are precisely the structural interventions Guyana desperately needs.

But structure requires foundation, and foundation requires urgency.

Start creating

Guyana is currently experiencing an unprecedented economic transformation, fueled by our energy sector. Money is flowing, infrastructure is booming, yet our cultural identity is being left to survive on table scraps and promises.

It is time for the MOCYS and its long-standing advisors to stop looking at what Jamaica did last year or what South Africa did five years ago. We have a distinct, rich tapestry of indigenous heritage and multi-ethnic creativity that cannot be copy-pasted from a foreign template.

The time for summits, primers, and focal points has passed. If the government truly believes that culture is central to national development, it needs to stop treating policy formulation like a lifetime achievement project and start delivering tangible legislative framework. Our creative sector has been waiting since 2016. They shouldn’t have to wait until 2027 just to see a draft.

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• Cultural, orange economy, procrastination

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