Emancipation Month should be more than a celebration of freedom won nearly two centuries ago. It should be a national moment of reckoning: What has economic freedom meant for the descendants of the enslaved, and what must be done to ensure that freedom produces ownership, wealth and power?
The answer demands that African Guyanese revisit the economic struggle that began immediately after emancipation.
Freedom in 1838 did not deliver land, capital or economic security. The formerly enslaved understood that political freedom without economic independence could leave them permanently vulnerable. So they did something remarkable. They pooled their scarce resources, bought abandoned plantations and transformed them into villages.
The Great Village Movement was therefore more than a housing exercise. It was an economic revolution.
Freed Africans purchased thousands of acres, converting plantations into communities such as Victoria, Buxton, Plaisance, Beterverwagting, Friendship, Kingelly, Queenstown, Dartmouth, Golden Grove and others. They bought land because they understood a fundamental truth: ownership creates independence.
They did not possess oil money. They did not have government grants running into billions. They did not have banks eager to finance them. They had determination, collective action and a vision that extended beyond their own lifetimes.
That history should make the present moment uncomfortable.
Guyana is now awash with oil wealth. Billions of dollars have entered the economy, and the country is experiencing an economic transformation unprecedented in its history. Yet the critical question for African Guyanese cannot simply be how much money is being spent.
It must be: How much productive wealth is being owned?
Being employed in the oil economy is not the same as owning a piece of it. Receiving a government contract is not the same as building a company capable of surviving beyond that contract. Consuming more goods because oil has increased incomes is not wealth creation. The objective must be ownership.
African Guyanese must demand a meaningful share of participation in the new economy—not as a racial entitlement, but as a matter of economic justice, opportunity and national inclusion. That requires a new economic movement.
Communities should revive the cooperative spirit of the Village Movement by pooling capital into investment funds capable of financing businesses, acquiring land and purchasing equity in productive enterprises. Entrepreneurs should move beyond small, fragmented operations and form partnerships capable of competing for major contracts. Professionals must become investors and mentors, not simply employees.
There must also be an aggressive push into sectors that will outlive petroleum: agriculture, agro-processing, construction, logistics, technology, renewable energy, financial services, manufacturing, tourism and real estate.
And government must be challenged to ensure that local content produces local ownership.
Contracts and procurement must be transparent. Access to financing must not depend on political connections. Local-content policies must facilitate technology transfer, equity ownership, skills development and the growth of Guyanese companies capable of becoming regional players.
Most importantly, African Guyanese must reject the dangerous idea that government alone can create their prosperity. What they must insist on, however, is that government creates the enabling environment and remains uncompromising in ensuring that they receive what is justly theirs.
The ancestors who purchased plantations understood something that remains true today: economic freedom must be pursued, organised and defended.
They started with almost nothing and built villages that survived generations. Today, their descendants stand in an oil-rich Guyana with vastly greater resources and opportunities. The question is whether this generation will merely consume the wealth of the oil age—or convert it into businesses, land, investments and institutions that their grandchildren will inherit.
Emancipation should therefore not end with remembering slavery.
