Guyana Is Pumping Oil and Hiring Engineers. The AI Question Is Who Trains Them.

Guyana's 800,000 people are living through one of the fastest economic changes in the world. The country found one of the largest offshore oil discoveries of the century, started commercial production in late 2019 and moved from a tight budget to large surpluses within a decade. GDP roughly multiplied sevenfold in six years.

I have watched it from Kingston as someone who has spent his career on Caribbean technical capacity. The oil money and the growth rate get the headlines. The shortage of skilled workers gets much less attention, and AI will either narrow it or widen it depending on how it is used.

Oil output has outrun the labour supply

Production from the Stabroek Block, operated by ExxonMobil with CNOOC and Chevron (which acquired Hess's stake in 2025), is now well above 600,000 barrels a day, with more development phases planned. Government revenue per person has multiplied. Construction in Georgetown has accelerated, property prices have risen and long-delayed coastal projects are moving. Inflation has stayed within tolerable bounds, but living costs in Georgetown are visibly higher than three years ago.

A population of 800,000 cannot supply construction managers, petroleum engineers, accountants, lawyers, developers, cybersecurity specialists and AI engineers in the numbers this economy needs. Foreign hiring fills the gap for now. The political risk is a two-tier labour market, with imported staff paid more than Guyanese doing similar work.

What AI can and cannot do for the shortage

Consultants are pitching AI in Georgetown as a substitute for the missing workforce: agents to run the back office, AI tutors to train the next generation, workflows to do the work of engineers who cannot be hired. Parts of that pitch hold up.

The larger gain is in making existing staff more productive. A Guyanese engineer with three years' experience and good AI tools drafts reports, checks calculations and searches documentation faster than the same engineer without them. That narrows the shortage. It does not remove it, and the remaining gap has to be filled by people, which makes training the harder problem.

Three ways to train enough people, and their trade-offs

The University of Guyana enrols roughly 8,000 students, and polytechnic and technical institutes add more. Technical graduates number in the low thousands a year, well short of demand.

Guyana is doing the second by default. The first is necessary but slow. The third fits the constraint best: adults who already have secondary education, trained with AI tutoring, simulations and on-the-job practice, into roles such as data technician, instrumentation technician, junior developer or compliance analyst. Few governments have committed to it, and among CARICOM members Guyana is the one with the budget to try.

What employers in Guyana should plan for

Retention. You will lose staff to oil services contractors, multinationals and migration. Pay that tracks the market, training that raises each employee's value, and a workplace people want to stay in all matter. AI tools help by raising output per employee, which leaves room to pay more.

Compliance. Anti-money-laundering and data protection requirements that hit Caribbean banks first now reach Guyanese firms with cross-border revenue. Compliance software that only large banks could afford a few years ago is now sold to mid-sized firms.

Your own data. A firm that has operated in Guyana for a decade holds records on local customers, suppliers and conditions that no new entrant can buy. Get it out of scattered spreadsheets and into a form you can analyse.

If I ran a mid-sized Guyanese firm in 2026, my first move would be to put one named person in charge of AI adoption for 12 months, with a budget and a target of either lower operating costs or more capacity. One person is accountable in a way a committee never is.

What firms outside Guyana should know

• The market is fast, not large. 800,000 people with concentrated buying power. Vendors that deliver quickly, support clients locally and connect to Guyanese systems will beat those that treat Guyana as one line in a regional plan.
• The oil supply chain buys regionally. Logistics, compliance and project management services are in demand. Trinidadian energy services firms and Jamaican professional services firms have natural advantages, if they set up locally.
• Talent moves both ways. Guyana recruits Caribbean technical staff at premium wages, and Guyanese who studied abroad are reconsidering home. Plan for both.

The resource-economy risk

Resource booms follow a known pattern: capital flows in, the currency strengthens, non-oil exports lose competitiveness, the workforce shifts into oil-related jobs, and when prices fall the wider economy is weaker than before. Guyanese policymakers know the pattern.

AI can help build non-oil exports. A Guyanese firm that sells remote technical services, regulatory analytics or agricultural exports improved by yield models has a business after the next oil downturn. A firm that uses AI only to cut costs in oil-related work does not.

My own case has a gap: AI-assisted adult training at national scale is largely untested. The early cohorts will show whether 18 to 24 months is realistic, and Guyana should measure them honestly before scaling.

"Resource booms are not won by the country with the largest deposit. They are won by the country with the most capable workforce when the deposit runs out. Guyana has the deposit. The workforce is the open question." - Adrian Dunkley, AI Boss

The practical questions are who writes the curriculum, who runs the programmes, who measures outcomes and who holds the contracts. They get little attention, and they decide whether the oil revenue leaves a trained workforce behind.

What to do next

1. Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labour: choose two mid-skilled roles employers struggle to fill, such as instrumentation technician and data technician, and fund one pilot cohort of 50 to 100 adults with AI-assisted training and guaranteed employer placements, measured at 12 and 24 months.
2. Oil services contractors: put part of your Local Content Act training commitments into that cohort model, and publish how many Guyanese trainees reach each job category each year.
3. Mid-sized Guyanese firms: name one AI adoption lead this quarter with a 12-month budget, and start with one back-office process such as invoice processing or compliance screening. Record the hours saved.
4. HR managers: give every professional employee a paid AI assistant licence (about US$20 to US$30 a month) and two hours of training, then check at 90 days which teams use it and what it changed.
5. Regional firms entering Guyana: register locally and read the Local Content Act's list of reserved goods and services before bidding, since some categories require Guyanese ownership or participation.