Guyana, 50 Years after the Jubilee

By Subraj Singh
Now that the main Jubilee celebrations are over, it is important for the country to look towards the future in order to know and to understand what is in store for Guyana over the next 50 years.

Adrian Alfred
Adrian Alfred

What would have changed by the year 2066? What would remain unchanged? What are the things we want 50 years from now? What are the things we can only hope to have? It seems as though Moray House had these same questions in mind when they played host to an evening of discussion entitled “2066: Looking Ahead”, which took place last Tuesday on May 24th .
Almost all of the speakers belonged to the youth demographic and this made the event all the more significant, since it offered young people a chance to share their opinions on matters related to the affairs of the country. Dr. Rosh Khan, Adrian Alfred, Dr. Stefan Hutson, Sara Bharrat, Michael Leonard, Ravin Singh and Francis Bailey were the speakers who presented on a variety of topics, while the discussions were capably moderated by Elsie Harry. Each speaker was allowed five minutes

Francis Bailey
Francis Bailey

to present on any aspect of Guyana in the next 50 years and most projected their ideas as hopes and expectations.
Rosh Khan, a medical doctor who operates a Global Marketing Agency, described the talks as “TED Talks on steroids” and this was particularly true as evidenced by his presentation which was a solid piece on the roles and uses of technology in Guyana. Khan lamented the fact that Guyana is way behind other nations when it comes to the use and implementation of technology. He used statistics from the World Bank to point out that an increase in high speed internet connections can lead to boost in a nation’s economic growth. According to Khan, “the future is one of algorithms…automation and mechanization” and it is important for the country to be ready to see technology as an opportunity. Noting that technology can benefit all sectors of development, his vision for the future includes a government that can help to create a space for “technological fertility” where new technologies are born and explored, a technology-based education that can focus on subjects like coding and programming, and an environment where access to international networks are encouraged.

Michael Leonard
Michael Leonard

Adrian Alfred, a CARICOM Youth Ambassador and one of the founding members of the Guyana National Youth Council, placed his focus on youth empowerment and development in his talk which was subtitled “Youth and Governance.” Alfred started the conversation by highlighting the lack of youth representation in Guyanese politics and his belief that quite a lot of young people don’t have an interest in governance, which is interesting since young people total more than 50 percent of the country’s population. He also related some of his own experiences in the recent local government elections where, as an independent candidate, he attended meetings that were always crowded with older people and hardly any youths. Alfred’s hopes for Guyana in 50 is for the country to be one where young people are more involved, where the people of the country are educated, committed to community development, and help to develop the country as a whole.

Ravin Singh
Ravin Singh

Dr. Stefan Hutson, a recent graduate of the University of Guyana School of Medicine, used his experiences working at the Georgetown Public Hospital and at various Health Centres around the city to arrive at the conclusion that healthcare in Guyana is “reactive” – meaning that most Guyanese react to illnesses and ailments after they happen. He noted that patients only try to stave off symptoms and seek out cures when they are past the point of treatment, and that such an attitude is one that goes against what is currently occurring in other parts of the world. Hutson advocates for preventative medicine and for the treatment of the body in a holistic manner with emphasis not only on the physical, but also on social and mental wellbeing. He believes that his hope for proper, primary preventative healthcare in Guyana by 2066 is curbed by the limited way in which Health Centres in Guyana operate, a lack of human resources, and a lack of materials and investment in the healthcare system.
Sara Bharrat is an award-winning writer who studied Literature and Linguistics at the University of Guyana and serves on the Board of the Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc. She focused on “Politics, Race and Identity” in her presentation and sought to answer the fundamental question of “Will we [the Guyanese people]

Rosh Khan
Rosh Khan

be one in 2066?” Bharrat proceeded to answer her own question in the affirmative, claiming that unity is inevitable and that “it will happen whether we want it or not.” Using examples from our history, she showed how in the past the Guyanese people have managed to make the right choices and have risen up to fight the ills that threatened us. She claimed that Identity Politics, born from the Politics of Race, the thing that prevents Guyana from achieving social cohesion and harmony, can, and eventually, will be overcome by Guyanese. Bharrat also highlighted the rise in the number of mixed race persons over the past few years and claimed that this is one of the factors that will end the Politics of Race and lead to a better nation in 2066.
“Technology and Education” was the choice of topic for Michael Leonard who is an entrepreneur, affiliated with initiatives such as Blue Caps. In the next 50 years, he hopes to see Guyana as “a nation that thirsts for knowledge” and the presence of “people who have solutions and not just degrees.” Leonard showed how we live in an age where information is readily available and that it is important for us to exploit this ease of availability. The core of his presentation was really about

Sara Bharrat
Sara Bharrat

people using technology to learn and do things that they would have had to otherwise rely on established institutions for. Leonard used several examples, including Duolingo, a free language-learning website that, according to him, offers the same services as Rosetta Stone, and the simple but effective YouTube, to present his vision of a 2066 where people use the technology available to them to implement their own culture of gaining skills and knowledge rather than relying on the government.
Ravin Singh, a third year student in International Relations at the University of Guyana, a journalist, and one of the youngest speakers, continued the focus on technology as having a major presence in Guyana 50 years from now and approached the topic by choosing to focus on its relationship to education. He began by

Stefan Hutson
Stefan Hutson

recounting how education has changed in Guyana in an attempt to show how the technology-oriented education of the near future is just part of a process where education changes itself in order to fully cater to its environment. He noted how Guyana lags behind, still clinging to the chalkboard and physical textbooks while others rely on iPads and other technological devices. The future of education in Guyana, according to Singh, will centre heavily on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects and he was able to point out that this can result in “the possible erosion of the Arts and Humanities”, which in turn can lead to a significant loss in the makeup of the Guyanese cultural identity.
The last speaker of the night was Francis Bailey who is an artist, musician and a founding member of the Guyana National Youth Council. Speaking on the Creative Industries in Guyana Bailey was able to show how the Creative Industries in some other countries are multi-billion dollar industries, while in Guyana the people of the country – and probable beneficiaries of the success of our Creative Industries – relate to the arts in an odd way by not recognizing the value of the Creative Industries. Bailey also said that a lot of groundwork relating to infrastructure still needs to be done and pointed out the lack of resources and materials available to schools as detrimental to the success of the artistic industries. He also condemned the mentality of Guyanese parents for limiting their children to career paths that only lead to becoming a doctor or lawyer and pointed out that even non-artists can learn to appreciate the difficulty of the art-creating process if proper resources are implemented in schools.
Overall, it was an evening filled with lively conversation between the speakers and an active audience who listened keenly and asked questions later. Many differing viewpoints were offered, many suggestions on what our country might be like in 50 years heard, and many ideas on how to solve current problems so that they do not plague us in the future. None of us really know what Guyana in 2066 will be like, and while a few of the talks hinted at a bit of gloom, there were way, way more hopes and expectations of a peaceful, unified, healthy, and educated Guyana.

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