The Guyanese Horizon is a monthly feature celebrating Guyana’s progress, heritage, and future. Published on the last Friday of each month.

THE CITY AND THE STREETS

Georgetown, March 2026

Walk down Main Street today and you will see something that did not exist five years ago: cranes.

Not one or two. Multiple. Against the Georgetown skyline — that low, wooden, Victorian skyline that survived colonial rule, independence, and decades of economic contraction — there are now steel arms reaching upward. Hotels under construction. Office buildings going up. A capital city remembering that it is supposed to grow.

Guyana struck oil in commercial quantities in 2019. The first barrel was lifted in 2019. By 2026, the country produces over 900,000 barrels per day and is on a trajectory toward 1.5 million. The money has started to arrive. And Georgetown — the city where it all flows through — is showing it.

WHAT IS BEING BUILT

The Heroes Highway, commissioned along the East Bank Demerara corridor, is the most visible symbol of the new infrastructure ambition. Four lanes where there were two. Proper lighting. Drainage that actually drains. It is, by any measure, a significant upgrade from the potholed single-carriageway that most Georgetownians spent decades navigating at a crawl.

Twenty lanes of interconnecting highway are promised between the East Bank, the Heroes Highway, and Ogle. That is not a typo. Twenty. President Ali has said so publicly, and works are ongoing — Massy to Greenfield, Diamond community, the Eccles Industrial Road.

The Linden-Mabura Road is 83% complete, opening the interior in ways that change the economic calculus for communities that have been effectively cut off from the coast for generations.

Three hundred bridges and structures are under simultaneous construction across the country, spanning Regions Three, Four, and Six.

This is a building programme of a scale Guyana has never attempted. Whether it can be executed well, on time, and with the quality the money demands — that is the standing question.

THE STREETS QUESTION

This month, the government gazetted 22 major Georgetown streets as national public roads under the Ministry of Public Works — transferring them from the Mayor and City Council’s authority. Regent Street. Robb Street. Camp Street. Lamaha Street. The Eastern Highway. Vlissengen Road.

Mayor Alfred Mentore called it “arbitrary centralisation.” Former Mayor Hamilton Green called it an abomination. The government has not yet offered a detailed public rationale.

What is undeniable is that these streets — the commercial and cultural arteries of Georgetown — have been in poor condition for years. The question of who should fix them, and who should bear the cost, has been argued for decades. The M&CC is chronically underfunded. The central government has deeper pockets.

Whether this transfer leads to better roads or simply shifts political control of a valuable asset — that will be answered in the months ahead. The cranes are optimistic. The potholes remain realistic.

WHAT GEORGETOWN IS BECOMING

There is a generational shift happening in Georgetown that does not make headlines but is visible to anyone who has been away and returned.

New restaurants that would not have existed ten years ago. A private sector with ambition. Young professionals who, for the first time in a generation, are considering staying rather than leaving. A diaspora — that vast Guyanese community in New York, Toronto, London — watching with something between pride and caution.

The Stabroek Market clock tower still stands, as it has since 1881. The wooden colonial buildings along Water Street still lean gently into the Atlantic breeze. The seawall still holds back the ocean from a city built below sea level.

But behind that skyline: cranes. And behind those cranes: the question every Guyanese is asking quietly.

Are we building this right?

THIS MONTH’S MILESTONE

The Building Expo 2026 opens in Georgetown this week — a gathering of regional and international construction and infrastructure professionals, focused on innovation, sustainability, and climate-resilient building. It is, in miniature, a symbol of where Guyana is trying to go: not just growing, but growing intelligently, with an eye on what rising sea levels and a changing climate will demand of a coastal country in the decades ahead.

The seawall held the ocean back for 200 years. The next 200 years will require more than a seawall.

The Guyanese Horizon publishes on the last Friday of each month. Celebrating progress. Honoring heritage. Building tomorrow.