GYIXP and the Struggle for Digital Liberation: A Call to Guyana’s New Vanguard
By Kwasi Fraser
President, Guyana Infrastructure Consortium
The launch of the Guyana Internet Exchange Point (GYIXP) is not merely a technical milestone—it is a radical act of reclamation. However embryonic, it represents an effort to seize control of the arteries of modern communication and return them to the people. And in this moment, we must be clear: GYIXP is not the end. It is the beginning of a new chapter in Guyana’s long and unfinished struggle for self-determination.
For too long, Guyana has remained peripheral to the digital architecture of global power. Though Guyanese speak of development, too often they are granted only access, not ownership. We consume data but do not control it. Our technologies are imported, our traffic routed through foreign servers, and our digital identity shaped by decisions made in Texas, Miami, New York, and Brussels. However, with GYIXP, we now open the door to something far more significant: the possibility of digital sovereignty.
GYIXP enables Guyana to retain its data within national borders. It allows local traffic to flow across domestic networks rather than detouring through foreign infrastructure. As Prime Minister Phillips confirmed at the launch, “Before now, if you made a call across one network to another, it had to be routed through Miami and back to Guyana. Now the routing is being done in Guyana.” This is a technical change, yes—but at its core, it is a political issue. It is economic. It is cultural. It is revolutionary.
The world’s leading industrial powers have long understood that control of infrastructure—whether it be railways, oil pipelines, or fiber-optic cables—is control of the future. Guyana must now recognize this as well. This is no time for complacency. It is a time for organized effort, intellectual clarity, and the building of national capacity to govern the digital world as confidently as we govern our farms, homes, schools, and villages.
The Prime Minister has rightly positioned GYIXP as part of a broader ICT transformation—one that seeks to connect the hinterland, lower bandwidth costs, and catalyze entrepreneurship. But this transformation must not be managed solely from above, nor captured by the interests of a privileged few.
Entrepreneurial Guyanese must democratize this infrastructure—embedding it within a national movement that uplifts workers, youth, the dispossessed, and the marginalized.
History offers guidance. When MAE-East, the first major non-governmental Internet exchange point in the United States, was created in 1992, it began not in a government ministry but through the vision of technologists and entrepreneurs who saw the future and claimed it. The exchange evolved from distributed locations to eventually consolidate in an underground parking garage in Vienna, Virginia—proof that revolutionary infrastructure can emerge from the most humble beginnings. From this foundation, Ashburn, Virginia—now the data center capital of the world —grew, handling an estimated 70% of global internet traffic. Guyana must draw lessons from this precedent: build not just pipes, but institutions of self-reliance.
The Guyanese diaspora has a critical role to play in this transformation. While comprehensive data on Guyanese representation in global tech hubs remains limited, we know that immigrant communities have been instrumental in building Silicon Valley’s infrastructure, with two-thirds of tech workers in the region being foreign-born. Guyanese engineers and innovators who have contributed to projects in AI, cloud computing, clean energy data centers, telecommunications, and cybersecurity across major tech companies must be called upon, not merely as benefactors, but as co-creators of this new digital vanguard.
To truly seize this moment, Guyana must organize a national coalition of engineers, planners, policymakers, and young visionaries to:
Build sovereign data centers powered by Guyana’s renewable energy resources, maintained by its people, and governed by its laws—creating an estimated 500+ local tech jobs while ensuring data remains within national borders;
Develop a national policy for AI and high-performance computing that serves the public interest, not corporate monopolies, positioning Guyana as a regional leader in ethical technology governance.
Forge regional alliances with CARICOM partners to promote digital equity and technological solidarity, leveraging our collective strength in a region where fewer than 100 Internet Exchange Points currently serve Latin America and the Caribbean.
Educate and empower the next generation of Guyanese to not just consume technology, but shape it—ethically, creatively, and strategically—for their own liberation through enhanced STEM programs and international technology partnerships.
To stop here—to merely celebrate GYIXP—is to fall short of a historic responsibility. This must be a launchpad, not a landing point. A new kind of development is needed—one that rejects the extractive digital colonialism of the Global North and redefines innovation, community, and value from the perspective of the South.
The economic implications are profound. A local Internet exchange reduces bandwidth costs for businesses, improves network performance and security, and lays the foundation for domestic content production and digital entrepreneurship. GYIXP’s establishment, alongside the broader ICT agenda that has already connected 90% of Guyana’s hinterland to high-speed internet services, positions the nation to capture rather than merely participate in the digital economy.
If the road to development has often been paved with dependency and underdevelopment, let this road lead somewhere different. Let it be lit by fiber optics and energized by consciousness. Let it lead to a Guyana that is not a gateway for digital colonialism, but a fortress of technological sovereignty—a Guyana where the poorest child in the Rupununi can write code, run algorithms, and create knowledge not merely to survive, but to be free.
Let us no longer route our future through others. Let us bring it home. Let us build it ourselves.
Kwasi Fraser
President, Guyana Infrastructure Consortium
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🌐 www.GuyanaConsortium.com
About the Author: Kwasi Fraser is President of the Guyana Infrastructure Consortium and former four-term Mayor of Purcellville, Virginia. He holds an MBA from Rutgers University and a BS in Engineering from SUNY Stony Brook, with over 20 years of experience in strategic business development and public sector leadership.
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