Starlink facilities to be set up throughout hinterland to help deliver online schooling – VP

…says travel costs to study at UG will no longer hold
back hinterland youths

In an effort to increase access to online education and online scholarships in indigenous, hinterland and riverain communities in Guyana, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government will be partnering with the Elon Musk-owned Starlink to set up facilities that will serve these communities.
This was explained by Vice President (VP) Bharrat Jagdeo, during a recent press conference where he spoke of the Government’s efforts to make education more accessible. According to the VP, the Government has already offered 30,000 online scholarships, with another 5,000 expected to be handed out this year.
Jagdeo noted that even while in opposition, the cost of travelling to Georgetown to study at the University of Guyana (UG) prohibited many hinterland youths from taking that step. He also recalled a public meeting where the PPP/C was able to get hundreds of youths signed up for the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) scholarship.
“I asked the young people how many of them have joined up on the scholarship programmes… and very few had. And I arranged for Minister Ashni Singh and Joe Hamilton to go back and they registered over 400 persons. So, one young man said to me, we’re happy for this, but I’m going to UG and its very costly.”
“The tuition is off at university, but my parents have to pay for me to rent a place in Georgetown and its very costly for me. And I explained to him that its precisely because of this, that when we were in opposition, we heard this so often about people being excluded from university… that is why we came up with the model of online scholarships,” Jagdeo noted.
Jagdeo made the point that while UG has two campuses, Turkeyen in Region Four and Tain in Region Six, there are also students living in the hinterland who have difficulty with accessing University education. Further, he noted that while a suggestion may be to build a third University in the hinterland, the scattered nature of the communities and low population density makes such an idea untenable.
This is where the Starlink service comes in, since the Government will be partnering with them to roll out the service in hinterland and riverain communities. According to Jagdeo, the programme will be executed by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
“We were thinking about how do we give every child an opportunity to go to university in Guyana. And that is why we came up with the model of, and we promised in our manifesto, 20,000 online scholarships. We said, if we could have people do university education right from their homes, then this would cut out the cost.”
“But then we encountered some additional difficulties, that we intend to solve. So, the first was, access to the indigenous communities. Because they didn’t have internet. How do you do online universities if you don’t have internet facilities? So… we’re putting Starlink facilities in all the indigenous, hinterland communities in general. Whether you’re indigenous or not. And the riverain areas of the country. So, you can have access to internet,” Jagdeo added.
It was recently announced that Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Tesla and ‘X’ owner Elon Musk, began operating in Guyana. Starlink’s arrival in Guyana is part of the move to further develop Guyana’s profitable and rapidly expanding tech sector, while ensuring prosperity for Guyana’s economy.
It was announced late last year that Starlink had applied for a licence to operate in Guyana to provide internet services. In a meeting with President Dr Irfaan Ali last year, Musk had expressed his intentions to invest in Guyana’s technological sector, as it provides a gateway to economic enhancement through digitisation and modernisation.
Guyana has been seeing rapid development in the telecommunications sector since it was liberalised in 2020. It was the PPP/C Government that officially liberalised the telecommunications sector, issuing the commencement orders on October 5, 2020 shortly after taking office on August 2, 2020.