Guyana Development Initiative

The Guyana Development Initiative (GDI) was launched in 2019 as an independent economic development initiative led by Harvard University Professor Michael Porter, head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School. GDI’s overarching ambition: helping the people of Guyana develop and implement an economic strategy that leverages the country’s newfound natural resource wealth to create sustainable shared prosperity

J.E. Austin Associates (JAA), since 2025 part of Civitta, was engaged as a key technical partner, contributing expertise across sectors and technical areas including agribusiness, tourism, regulatory reform over the full six-year duration of the initiative. 

Guyana faced the challenge of translating significant natural resource wealth into broad-based economic development – beyond extraction.

Key obstacles included:

• Risk of the natural resource boom causing Dutch disease and weakening other economic sectors
• Underdeveloped agriculture sector with weak market linkages, limited marketing capacity, and insufficient private investment in high-value agricultur
• Untapped nature- and culture-based tourism potential, despite world-class biodiversity assets
• Infrastructure gaps, institutional limitations, and outdated regulation that limited private sector development

Our team contributed across several workstreams over the life of the initiative:

• Workstream I: Competitiveness diagnostics and strategy

With the GDI project team, we supported core competitiveness diagnostics and strategy work that framed Guyana’s economic development agenda and GDI’s long-term initiatives. Our team analyzed priority value chains and clusters including sugar, rice, high-value agriculture, tourism, and energy-related services, while also examining cross-cutting policy areas such as infrastructure, education, health, and electricity. This diagnostic work helped identify where Guyana had credible opportunities for diversification, what constraints limited firm and cluster performance, and which public-private actions could convert national growth into durable investment, productivity gains, and improved quality of life. The resulting strategy work provided an evidence base for subsequent GDI engagement in sector development, investment attraction, and cluster-level initiatives. 

• Workstream II: Agribusiness investment and growth

In partnership with the Guyana Manufacturers and Service Association (the country’s leading business association), our team supported market linkages, improved marketing, and wider technology adoption for the high-value agriculture sector through public events and advisory services.

We led development of an Agriculture Investment Prospectus in collaboration with the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest) and the Ministry of Agriculture. The prospectus was launched at the Agri-Investment Forum and Expo in Georgetown in May 2022, bringing together companies, investors, and policymakers from across the Caribbean and beyond. It included an introduction from the President of Guyana, profiled high-potential sectors and companies, and provided analysis of the agriculture sector and sub-sectors including production, exports, and supporting initiatives.

Following the development of the initial investment prospectus, our experts worked with a team of investment attraction experts to identify agribusiness firms and investors aligned with Guyana’s sector priorities for the 2023 Agri-Investment Forum and Expo. The GDI team facilitated engagement between selected investors, GO-Invest, and private sector counterparts to encourage discussions around specific investment opportunities.

• Workstream III: Tourism recovery and cluster development

Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, our team supported Guyana’s tourism sector in recovery and additional sectoral strengthening through a series of activities to support the emerging tourism cluster.

We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of Guyana’s nature- and culture-based tourism potential across key regions: North Rupununi, South Central Rupununi, and the Essequibo area. The study engaged over 100 stakeholders – including Indigenous communities, private sector operators, and government officials. Field visits to leading community-based tourism (CBT) sites assessed conservation linkages, market readiness, and institutional support structures. The study identified viable ecotourism circuits, mapped infrastructure gaps, and recommended enhancements to governance, product development, and marketing strategies.

Later in the project, we oversaw an assessment of more than 20 potential glamping sites, shortlisting eight high-potential locations, and developing detailed business plans for three priority sites in Indigenous communities. 

• Workstream IV: Regulatory reform

Our team oversaw a multi-year regulatory simplification and business environment reform workstream designed to reduce administrative burdens, improve government service delivery, and strengthen Guyana’s investment climate. We managed a team of regulatory experts working in partnership with the Ministry of Finance to advance reforms in priority areas, including access to finance,business start-up, tax compliance, and government service delivery. The work produced more than 30 decision memos, over 100 actionable recommendations, technical notes, legal revisions, proposed action plans, and implementation support materials.

• Development of a national economic competitiveness strategy to promote economic diversification and broad private sector growth
• Agriculture Investment Prospectus launched at the 2022 Agri-Investment Forum and Expo, reaching investors, companies, and policymakers from across CARICOM countries
• Development of the tourism cluster by identifying investment opportunities and new product offerings, supporting improved and market responsive workforce skill development, and providing on-demand support to key sector stakeholders
• Adopted or advanced reforms in the business enabling environment in including areas including easier access to financial services, increased digitization of government processes, and simplified visa processes

1. Strategy has to become an operating model: GDI succeeded by translating a national competitiveness strategy into practical workstreams, technical outputs, and implementation support. The project moved from diagnosis to action across sectors and technical areas while remaining closely engaged with the government and private sector counterparts throughout project delivery. 

2. Resource wealth can create opportunities but deliberate efforts are needed to ensure broad benefits: Rapid headline economic growth from natural resource development does not automatically result in economic competitiveness of other sectors and broadly shared development benefits. Agriculture, tourism, social services, and other areas needed active strategy, investment packaging, regulatory reform, and institutional follow-through to leverage the benefits of resource-driven growth. 

3. The business environment is central to competitiveness and generating private sector opportunities: GDI’s regulatory reform work showed that frictions in policy and regulation can hold back even strong market opportunities. Work on business registration, access to finance, permitting, exports, tax compliance, and service delivery helped advance reforms affecting firms, investors, and citizens in ways that unlocked new opportunities and improved interactions with government.