By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Sun. Sept. 27, 2026: Guyanese continue to live with a maddening contradiction: a country now producing nearly 1% of the world’s oil, sitting on more per-capita oil wealth than almost any nation on earth, still cannot keep the lights on reliably in Guyana. Blackouts, load-shedding, and an aging, overstretched grid have been a fact of life in Guyana for generations – long before Exxon’s discovery, and stubbornly persistent since. In fact, since I was a little girl growing up there.

So a story out of an unlikely place – Lund, Sweden, population under 135,000 – is worth Georgetown’s full attention.

Swedish entrepreneur Jonas Birgersson, once known as “Broadband Jesus” for his role pioneering residential fiber Internet, is now applying that same networking logic to electricity. Instead of one giant, centralized grid vulnerable to a single point of failure, his company ViaEuropa is building networks of small, local “microgrids” — each capable of generating, storing, and sharing power independently, and linked together the way routers share data across the internet. If one node goes down, the rest of the network keeps running.

The model is already live in an apartment and commercial complex in Lund, generating solar power, storing it in batteries, and sharing it among tenants since April 2025. Birgersson’s team is now retrofitting a 1960s-era public housing project – 10 buildings, 278 apartments – with the same architecture, using old incinerator rooms to house storage batteries and burying cable between buildings.

The pitch, in Birgersson’s words: “Many. Small. Cheap. Digitally orchestrated.” Cheaper to build, easier to expand a piece at a time, and dramatically more resilient than a single sprawling grid — the kind of grid that, as the Times reported, nearly took down all of Europe’s power system in 2021 after a single substation failure in Croatia, and that left millions of Ukrainians without power after Russia attacked centralized infrastructure.

That resilience argument should land hard in Guyana, where the national grid has long been blamed for cascading, system-wide outages triggered by single points of failure – not unlike the very vulnerabilities decentralization is designed to eliminate.

Here is the question I think Georgetown needs to be asking: with billions in oil revenue now flowing and a $100 million Exxon-funded workforce and infrastructure commitment already on the table, why is Guyana still leaning almost entirely on a traditional, centralized grid model to solve a blackout crisis that traditional grids have failed to solve for 50 years?

Decentralized microgrid technology is no longer theoretical. The European Union’s own Grid Action Plan is pushing member states toward networks that are “more digitalized, decentralized and flexible.” NATO’s research arm is studying decentralization as a resilience and security strategy. A EU-funded research consortium – SAFEr GRID – is actively testing whether linked networks of small, independent grids can work at national scale.

Guyana doesn’t need to wait for Europe to finish proving the concept. With its oil wealth, its small and geographically dispersed population centers, and a grid that has never delivered consistent reliability even in the capital, Guyana is arguably a more natural candidate for this kind of leapfrog than a dense, already-built-out European economy. This is the same leapfrogging logic that let parts of the Caribbean and the developing world skip landline telephone infrastructure entirely and go straight to mobile.

The government doesn’t need to abandon its existing grid investments overnight. But it does need to ask, seriously and publicly: should a portion of Guyana’s oil revenue – the same revenue economists are already debating whether Guyana is getting a fair share of – be directed toward piloting decentralized microgrid projects in Georgetown, in the hinterland communities the national grid has never reliably reached, and in the new housing developments rising across the country?

Guyana has the money. It has the need. The only question left is whether it has the political will to try something other than what has already failed for half a century.

Editor’s Note: Felicia J. Persaud is the founder of Invest Caribbean, AI Capital Exchange and publisher of News Americas Now. Her work spans journalism, communications, entrepreneurship and access to capital.

By Dr. Isaac Newton

News Americas, NY, NY, Sun. Sept, 27, 2026: In 2000, Lester Bird, then Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, stood before the United Nations and said: “Surprise me.” He had heard the promises. He wanted to see the results. He wanted a child born in poverty to find a real chance, a small country to have its voice heard, and a world that spoke about fairness to practice it. Then he made the challenge larger: “Surprise small countries like mine. Surprise us.” Twenty six years later, those words still have work to do. The world must answer them. But the Caribbean states must answer them too. Watch us.

Consider what life on a small island can demand. One hurricane can rip roofs from houses, shut schools, break roads and leave a business owner counting losses before the sun rises. A war thousands of miles away can make groceries and fuel more expensive at home. Higher interest rates can squeeze a national budget. A weak tourist season can reach the taxi driver, hotel worker, farmer and shopkeeper before the statistics appear in a report. The Caribbean Development Bank estimates that the region will need US$65.2 billion between 2024 and 2033 to meet existing policy goals and avoid economic stagnation. The amount could rise sharply when stronger infrastructure, climate protection and financial reserves are added.  These are not distant problems. They show up at the checkout counter, in the classroom, at the fuel pump and around the Cabinet table.

Still, small is a fact about land. It is not a fact about people. A few islands have given the world writers, musicians, athletes, teachers, scientists, entrepreneurs, pastors and diplomats whose influence travels far beyond the shoreline. Our people have learned to do much with little. That lesson now needs to shape the way we build our countries. Grow more of our food. Make energy less expensive and more dependable. Give children schools that prepare them for the work ahead. Help local companies find customers beyond the region. Give young people reasons to build here rather than believing that success begins at an airport departure gate. And when several islands face the same problem, stop paying separately for the same answer.

That is where Bird’s challenge reaches both the world and ourselves. To wealthy countries, development banks and investors, the Caribbean can still say: Surprise us. Make it easier to finance a seawall before the sea breaks the road. Help strengthen a hospital before the next storm tests it. Give Caribbean businesses fair access to larger markets. Share technology that can lower the cost of power, food and communication. Judge a country by the risks it faces as well as the income it reports. The United Nations has already moved in this direction through its Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, which looks beyond income to a country’s exposure to outside shocks and its ability to withstand them.  But our answer cannot end with what the world owes us. Surprise them. Spend public money as if it belongs to the people, because it does. Finish the road after announcing it. Repair the school before building another platform for speeches. Train people for jobs that actually exist. Make regional agreements produce cheaper power, faster travel, larger markets or better services. Let citizens see where their money went and what it achieved.

And that is where Watch Us begins. Watch the farmer who finds a better way to grow food. Watch the fisherman who reaches a market beyond his island. Watch the young programmer who builds a company from a bedroom and sells its work across the ocean. Watch two governments share a service instead of building two expensive ones. Watch a school turn a bright child into a skilled adult. Watch a public official finish what was promised. Watch a taxpayer ask where the money went and receive an answer. Watch small countries test ideas, learn quickly and help one another improve. The world has a responsibility to give us a fair chance. We have a responsibility to show what we can do with it. Bird asked the world to surprise him. The challenge remains. But the Caribbean has something to say now: Surprise us, world. We will do our part. Then watch us.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Isaac Newton is a leadership strategist, governance scholar, and author specializing in institutional excellence, ethical leadership, and human development. Educated at the University of the Southern Caribbean, Oakwood University, Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard, he writes on leadership, governance, and the development of people and institutions. He is the author of Fix It Preacher, Face Life Squarely, and Intimate Intimacy; and coauthor of Steps to Good Governance, Daring to Hope, When Nations Kneel, and The Belief Code.