A major oil discovery was made offshore in the Stabroek block in 2015, with reserves very large relative to the country's size, and production began in late 2019. Guyana became one of the world's fastest-growing economies for several consecutive years, and from among South America's poorest countries its income per head rose sharply in less than a decade.

Established a Natural Resource Fund in 2019 with the framework revised in 2021, joined international extractive transparency mechanisms, and published its petroleum contracts — a step many oil producers do not take. But the original contract terms have been widely debated domestically, and the withdrawal rules were amended toward permitting larger transfers to the budget.

Not whether a country has one — any country can establish a fund. The question is whether the withdrawal rules survive multiple governments, multiple election cycles and multiple price downturns. Kiribati kept a fund from 1956 but has drawn it thin; Nauru's vanished entirely. The difference between those outcomes is dozens of small decisions across decades.

Yes, but the constitution provides that a person holding another nationality is not eligible to sit in the National Assembly. In 2018 a no-confidence vote passed by exactly one vote, and it then emerged that the member casting the deciding vote held another nationality, producing a prolonged legal dispute and ultimately elections.

'This country permits dual citizenship' almost never means 'with no restrictions'. Most countries permitting dual nationality exclude dual nationals from certain offices. If you or your children may enter politics, serve in the military or hold certain public positions, this is a question to ask before taking an additional nationality, not afterwards.

The Essequibo region comprises roughly two thirds of the territory Guyana administers and Venezuela claims sovereignty over it. An 1899 international arbitral award fixed the boundary assigning the region to British Guiana; in 1962 Venezuela declared it did not recognise that award's validity; the 1966 Geneva Agreement established a framework for settlement; and in 2018 Guyana brought the matter to the International Court of Justice, where proceedings are ongoing.

After the abolition of slavery, plantation owners sought replacement labour, and hundreds of thousands of people from India were brought under indenture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — the same system that took Indians to Trinidad, Fiji, Mauritius and South Africa. The result is two large communities of Indian and African descent alongside Indigenous Amerindian and other groups.

Because much of the coastal plain where most of the population lives sits below sea level at high tide, protected by a sea wall and drainage canal system dating from Dutch colonial times, and Georgetown lies within it. Maintaining that system is a permanent fixed cost of the state.