There is a dangerous assumption taking root in Guyana. It is the belief that because foreign investors are arriving in record numbers, they must therefore be invested in Guyana’s development. We hear constant announcements about new hotels, new contractors, new service providers, and new multinational companies establishing operations here. The arrival of foreign capital is treated almost as a national achievement in itself. Yet there is a fundamental question that too few people are asking: who ultimately benefits from all this activity? Foreign investors are not coming to Guyana to develop Guyana. They are not coming to empower local businesses, train Guyanese entrepreneurs, or create generational wealth for Guyanese families. They are coming for the same reason investors have crossed oceans for centuries. They see an opportunity to earn a return on their investment.
There is nothing wrong with that. Profit is not a crime. The mistake is not theirs. The mistake is ours when we confuse investment with partnership. A true partnership leaves behind more than buildings and payrolls. It transfers knowledge. It develops local suppliers. It creates opportunities for domestic businesses to grow. It trains local managers and professionals who eventually become leaders in their own industries. A genuine partnership makes a country stronger and less dependent over time. Investment, by contrast, can generate impressive economic activity while leaving very little lasting capacity behind. The distinction matters because one builds a nation while the other simply extracts value from it.
Much of what we are witnessing today resembles the latter. Many foreign companies arrive with their own executives, their own technical experts, their own suppliers, and often their own networks of preferred contractors. Guyanese workers are hired, but usually into the lower and middle tiers of the operation. The highest salaries frequently go abroad. The most lucrative contracts often remain in foreign hands. The profits generated here are ultimately repatriated elsewhere. Even the spending patterns tell a story. Many expatriate workers fly into Guyana for their shifts and leave as soon as their work rotation is complete. Their salaries are not being spent in local restaurants, local entertainment venues, local housing markets, or local businesses. The economic benefits are therefore much narrower than the headline investment figures would suggest.
This is not unique to Guyana. It is how international capital operates. Investors have obligations to shareholders, not to countries. Their responsibility is to maximize returns. The responsibility for ensuring that those investments contribute meaningfully to national development belongs to the host country. Successful nations understand this. They do not simply throw open the doors and hope that prosperity will somehow trickle down. They create policies and institutions that ensure foreign investment develops domestic capacity alongside corporate profits.
Norway remains one of the most cited examples. When oil was discovered, Norway welcomed foreign expertise because it needed it. However, the country simultaneously invested heavily in education, technical training, local engineering capabilities, and domestic institutions. Over time, Norwegian companies became major players in the industry themselves. The country’s wealth was not built solely on extracting oil. It was built on deliberately converting resource wealth into local expertise, local ownership, and long-term national capacity. The same principle can be seen in the United Arab Emirates, where foreign investment helped accelerate development but was accompanied by strategic efforts to ensure local participation and domestic benefit.
Guyana today faces a similar choice. We can continue celebrating every foreign investor that arrives and assume that development will naturally follow, or we can begin asking harder questions. How many Guyanese businesses are being integrated into supply chains? How many Guyanese are being trained for senior leadership positions? How many local companies are growing because of these investments? How much of the wealth generated here is staying here? These are not anti-investment questions. They are development questions. A country can experience record GDP growth while large sections of its population continue to struggle with high food prices, expensive transportation, housing challenges, and limited opportunities to build businesses of their own.
The irony is that one of Guyana’s greatest development partners already exists, yet remains largely underutilized. It is the Guyanese diaspora. Unlike most foreign investors, the diaspora already has a personal stake in the country’s future. Their families live here. Their roots are here. Their communities are here. When a Guyanese entrepreneur living in New York, Toronto, London, or Atlanta invests in Guyana, the incentives are often different. The objective is not solely profit. There is frequently a desire to contribute, to create opportunities, to help communities, and to maintain connections with home. Their success and Guyana’s success are often intertwined in ways that multinational corporations can never replicate.
That does not mean every diaspora investor is automatically virtuous or that every foreign investor is exploitative. It means incentives matter. The incentives of the diaspora are naturally more aligned with the long-term prosperity of Guyana. A diaspora entrepreneur is more likely to mentor local businesses, hire Guyanese professionals, invest in community initiatives, and reinvest earnings locally. Yet despite years of speeches about diaspora engagement, there remains no comprehensive strategy to mobilize diaspora capital, expertise, networks, and experience at the scale required. We continue to roll out the red carpet for foreign investors while often overlooking one of the most valuable resources available to us: Guyanese people themselves.
No country has ever outsourced its way to prosperity. Foreign investment has an important role to play. We need capital. We need expertise. We need global partnerships. But we must enter those relationships with clear eyes and realistic expectations. Investors come to create wealth for themselves. There is nothing unusual about that. The role of government, business leaders, and citizens is to ensure that Guyana also creates wealth for Guyanese. If we fail to do so, we may one day discover that while the oil flowed, the contracts were signed, and the GDP numbers soared, much of the wealth created by this historic opportunity ended up enriching everyone except the people who call Guyana home.
The question is not whether foreign investors are benefiting from Guyana. Of course they are. The question is whether twenty years from now Guyanese businesses, Guyanese workers, and Guyanese families will have benefited just as much. If the answer is no, then history will record that we mistook investment for partnership and growth for development.
