Developing countries struggle for more reasons than access to capital or resources

Aug 23, 2026 Features / Columnists, News

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By Dr Karen Abrams, MBA AA

(Kaieteur News) – It is often believed, and has historically often been true, that developing nations struggle simply because they lack the resources to build the fundamentals of a modern economy: clean water, electricity, public infrastructure, health care, education and now internet access. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though built for individuals rather than nations, maps almost perfectly onto this idea of development. Just as a person cannot pursue growth and meaning while hungry or unsafe, a nation cannot pursue prosperity while its people are thirsty, sick or in the dark. The idea is that once this foundation is in place, reinforced by a social safety net for the vulnerable, decent wages and an economic environment in which people can prosper, a second layer becomes possible: personal development. This is the layer where people are paid a living wage, have disposable income for leisure, and are free to volunteer, innovate and strengthen their communities. It is, in effect, the layer where a “happiness index” becomes achievable.

What I propose is that wealth alone does not guarantee this kind of productive ecosystem. Too often in developing countries, systems are structured, whether by design or neglect, to keep wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, while the masses labour at the edge of survival. A smaller middle class, fortunate enough to navigate the right paths, chief among them a solid foundational education, manages to eke out a living above mere survival: affording homes and cars, living just comfortably enough, if overworked, to consider themselves lucky not to be like “those folks” who suffer. And too often, we console ourselves with the comforting myth that people are poor simply because they have not worked hard enough.

Which brings us to Guyana. What is true is that our nation has been blessed with unbelievable wealth, even if the oil contracts negotiated to unlock it are far from ideal. For a country of fewer than one million people, a reality in which roughly half the population lives in poverty feels like an unnecessary burden, one we should not have to bear.

The data bears this out, and it tells a more precise story than “the poor don’t work.” According to an Inter-American Development Bank study using Guyana’s 2021 household survey data, roughly 32% of Guyanese lived in extreme poverty and 58% in poverty overall, among the highest rates in the region and comparable to Venezuela, Honduras and Guatemala. And this poverty is not a story of idleness. Employment among the poor is high: 77% for the extreme poor and 83% for the moderate poor. Nor is it a story of short hours. Quite the opposite. Guyana’s poor work among the longest hours anywhere in Latin America and the Caribbean: roughly 52 hours a week for the extreme poor and 58 hours for the moderate poor, compared with a regional norm of roughly 30 to 40 hours. The problem is not that people will not work. The problem is what that work pays. For every dollar a non-poor Guyanese earns per hour, the extreme poor earn about 25 cents and the moderate poor about 43 cents. People are working themselves to exhaustion and still cannot climb out. That is a system problem, not a character problem.

I consider myself something of an expert on Guyana’s education system, based only on the data I have been able to access, and that data tells a consistent, troubling story. A pre-nursery diagnostic revealed that roughly half the nation’s children entered nursery school unprepared. For the other half, parents had already been pointing out colors, letters and numbers at home, a head start that compounds over time.

That early disadvantage shows up starkly in the 2019 Grade 2 assessment, where only about half of learners were even approaching mastery in numeracy and literacy, and just 5% had achieved mastery in literacy and 8% in numeracy. The same troubling pattern continues through Grade 4.

The Ministry of Education’s own data shows meaningful improvement by the time students reach the Grade 6 NGSA. That improvement should be acknowledged. But a historical non-matriculation rate of more than 50% tells the larger story: the school system is not saving most of the learners who walk through its doors already struggling.

This is not for lack of trying. The problem has proven intractable despite interventions from successive governments, ministers and programs. And education is only one front. Any day on social media brings fresh reminders of struggles that run the gamut of ministries: poor water quality, frightening hospital experiences, unreliable water pressure, scarce jobs and wages that remain low even in what is now, on paper, an oil economy.

How is this possible?

Setting aside the extraction of resources from the developing world, Western societies and the BRICS nations alike have benefited from a clear vision of development. Whatever that vision looked like in each case, it led them to recruit their best people, commit to the scientific method, and build institutions around research, data analysis and evidence-based decision-making. These societies have systems and structures that, while imperfect and compromised at times, remain resilient enough to keep the foundations of development intact.

One thing all of these societies understand is that being the best requires developing and nurturing citizens according to their interests and abilities. The best mathematicians are set to work on the hardest problems. The best athletes are recruited by the winning teams. These societies live a truth that Guyana still struggles to embrace: building a strong, resilient nation requires putting the best people in the right roles. Merit must be seen to matter. And a nation, especially one as small as Guyana, must be built on a foundation of truth, equality, data-driven decision-making and justice.

So here we are: a country of unbelievable wealth, with no clear vision for the next fifty years. What kind of nation do we wish to leave our children? Are we truly committed to diversity and inclusion? Can we say with certainty that every citizen in this nation is rewarded according to their ability and their willingness to work?

If Guyana is to grow, flourish and live up to the promise of being the jewel of the region, we must recommit to inclusive nation-building. Every citizen, regardless of gender, politics, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability, must be free to grow and flourish according to their ability. We must build a real social safety net for the vulnerable. We must lower taxes and improve the environment for doing business; registering a company or completing routine government transactions should increasingly be a matter of minutes online, not months in a queue. Other nations have managed this for decades.

None of this requires new oil, new loans or new foreign investment. The IDB data makes that plain: Guyanese are already working some of the longest hours in the region. The resource we have failed to unlock is not in the ground. It is the return on the labour our own people are already giving. A nation that asks its poorest citizens to work 52-hour weeks and still leaves them in poverty does not have a resource problem. It has a design problem.

And design problems, unlike oil reserves, are entirely within our power to fix.

The wealth is here. The people are already working for it.

What remains is the will to build a system that finally pays them back.

 

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• capital, developing countries, Karen Abrams, resources

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