Founder and Executive Director of STEMGuyana, Dr. Karen Abrams, is urging Guyana to move beyond celebrating youth innovation and instead build the systems needed to turn local ideas into national solutions.
In an op-ed published in her Kaieteur News column, Abrams used the story of young innovator Maryam Bacchus to make a broader case for what she describes as Guyana’s urgent need for an “innovation ecosystem” — a national framework of mentorship, investment, public-private partnerships and institutional support designed to nurture talent and solve local problems.
At the centre of Abrams’ argument is Bacchus’ creation of Litta Reporta, a citizen-reporting app built two years ago to tackle littering, illegal dumping and waste disposal challenges.
According to Abrams, Bacchus identified a visible community problem affecting public health, drainage, flooding and tourism, then spent months researching and designing a practical solution.
“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,” Abrams wrote.
Abrams said Bacchus’ work represented more than a coding exercise.
“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,” she said.
Her op-ed comes at a time when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched its own litter-reporting platform, Clean592, and expanded environmental complaint services through its e-services platform.
Abrams welcomed that development but raised an important question: whether Guyana is doing enough to integrate and support the innovators who are already working on similar solutions.
“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?” Abrams asked.
For Abrams, Bacchus’ story is symbolic of a wider national challenge.
She argued that innovation is not simply about apps, laboratories or grant funding, but about creating pathways where talent is recognised early, mentored, tested and connected to institutions.
“That is the beginning of an innovation ecosystem,” Abrams said.
Abrams drew from her own experience to illustrate the point.
She recounted how her four children developed an app called FIVE-O in 2014 after a series of police shootings in the United States sparked widespread protests. The app, designed to document police interactions, gained international attention, earned recognition through the Innovating Justice programme in The Hague, and won €22,000.
But Abrams said the greater value was not the money—it was the access.
The project opened doors to Facebook, connected them with billionaire investor Ben Horowitz, and helped position them for top universities including Stanford University and Cornell University.
“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,” Abrams wrote.
Abrams’ intervention comes as Guyana continues its oil-fuelled economic expansion. Reuters has projected that Guyana’s economy will grow by 16.2 per cent in 2026, following 19.3 per cent growth in 2025, driven largely by oil and gas, while the non-oil sector expanded by 14.3 per cent last year.
But Abrams warned that national wealth alone does not create national capacity.
“We cannot confuse buildings with ecosystems,” she cautioned, noting that labs, hackathons and grants are useful but insufficient without long-term support, procurement access and institutional respect.
She argued that Guyana must ensure innovation is not reserved for the politically connected or financially privileged, warning that such exclusion would only reproduce inequality.
“Innovation cannot be reserved for the children of the connected, the wealthy, the politically favored or the already visible,” Abrams wrote.
Abrams said Guyana’s biggest challenges—from waste management and flooding to agriculture, healthcare and education—are exactly the kinds of issues young innovators are equipped to address.
But for that to happen, she said, the country must create systems that take their ideas seriously.
“That mindset may be more valuable than oil,” Abrams said. “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.”
Her conclusion was both a challenge and a hopeful warning: Guyana has the talent, but not yet the ecosystem to fully receive it.
“The answer, so far, is not yet. But we can.”
