Guyana
Name
| Official name | Co-operative Republic of Guyana |
|---|---|
| Former names | The Dutch colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice (to 1814); British Guiana (1831–1966); Guyana as a Commonwealth realm (1966–1970) |
| Demonym | Guyanese |
| Meaning of the name | "The land of many waters," in the Amerindian tongues of the coast |
| Motto | "One People, One Nation, One Destiny" |
Quick facts
| Capital | Georgetown — Stabroek until 1812; below sea level behind the seawall; about 120,000 in the city, 200,000 in its area |
|---|---|
| Largest towns | Georgetown; Linden, the bauxite town; New Amsterdam; Anna Regina; Bartica; Lethem on the Brazilian border; Mabaruma |
| Official language | English — the only English-speaking country in South America; Guyanese Creole, Creolese, the spoken tongue; nine Amerindian languages recognized |
| Currency | Guyanese dollar — ISO code GYD, G$; about 209 to the U.S. dollar |
| Time zone | Guyana Time, UTC−4, all year |
| Calling code | +592 |
| Internet domain | .gy |
| ISO 3166 codes | GY · GUY · 328 |
| Vehicle registration code | GUY |
| Driving side | Left |
| Electricity | 240 V and 120 V, 60 Hz — both in use; plug types A, B, D and G |
| Independence | 26 May 1966, from the United Kingdom — Forbes Burnham the first prime minister; the republic 23 February 1970, the Cuffy rebellion's day |
| National days | 26 May, Independence Day; 23 February, Republic Day and Mashramani; 1 August, Emancipation Day; 5 May, Arrival Day, for the first Indian laborers of 1838; Phagwah, Diwali, Eid and Christmas all holidays |
| Constitution | 6 October 1980 — the Burnham constitution, an executive presidency; reformed in 2000–01 after the Herdmanston accord; the president limited to two terms since 2001 |
| Population | 746,955 at the census of 2012 — the last published; the results of the census of 2022 delayed; about 830,000 (UN, 2025 est.) |
| Area | 214,969 km² (83,000 sq mi) — land 196,849 km², water 18,120 km²; the Essequibo region west of the river, about 159,500 km² and two-thirds of the country, claimed by Venezuela |
Flag & national symbols
| National flag | The Golden Arrowhead — a green field with a red triangle at the hoist bordered in black, inside a golden arrowhead bordered in white: the forests, the zeal and endurance of the people, the mineral wealth and the rivers, the arrow of the nation's progress; designed by the American vexillologist Whitney Smith and hoisted at independence, 26 May 1966.Flag of Guyana |
|---|---|
| Coat of arms | A shield with the Victoria regia lily over three wavy blue lines for the rivers, a hoatzin above, supported by two jaguars holding a pickaxe and a sugar cane with a rice stalk, under an Amerindian cacique's crown, over the motto — granted 25 February 1966 |
| National anthem | "Dear Land of Guyana, of Rivers and Plains" — words by Archibald Leonard Luker, music by Robert Cyril Gladstone Potter; adopted 1966 |
| National motto | "One People, One Nation, One Destiny" |
| National colors | Green, gold, red, black and white |
| National bird | The hoatzin — the Canje pheasant, the stinkbird of the rivers with claws on its wings as a chick; on the arms |
| National flower | The Victoria amazonica — the giant water lily, Victoria regia, whose pads bear a child; on the arms; found by Schomburgk on the Berbice in 1837 |
| National animal | The jaguar — the two of the arms; widely cited |
| National dish | Pepperpot — the Amerindian stew of meat in cassareep, the cassava juice, eaten at Christmas; the roti and curry of the Indo-Guyanese; cook-up rice; widely cited |
| Symbol status | The flag, arms and anthem are fixed by law; the bird and flower by the arms; the animal and dishes widely cited |
Geography
| Location | The north coast of South America on the Atlantic — between Venezuela to the west, Brazil to the south and Suriname to the east; the Guiana Shield; Caribbean in culture, South American on the map |
|---|---|
| Land borders | 2,933 km (1,822 mi) with three countries |
| Border with Brazil | 1,308 km (813 mi) — the Takutu River and the Rupununi savanna; the bridge at Lethem |
| Border with Suriname | 836 km (519 mi) — the Corentyne, its whole width claimed by Suriname, and the New River Triangle disputed |
| Border with Venezuela | 789 km (490 mi) — the Essequibo line of the arbitral award of 1899, which Venezuela rejects |
| Coastline | 459 km (285 mi) — the mud coast below sea level |
| Highest point | Mount Roraima, 2,835 m (9,301 ft), at the three-country point |
| Lowest point | The Atlantic Ocean, 0 m — the coastal plain up to 2 m below high tide |
| Mean elevation | 207 m (679 ft) |
| Major rivers | The Essequibo, 1,010 km, the longest, with an estuary 20 km wide and its islands; the Demerara, of Georgetown and the sugar; the Berbice; the Corentyne on the Surinamese border; the Mazaruni and the Cuyuni of the gold; the Potaro with Kaieteur; the Rupununi |
| Kaieteur | The waterfall of the Potaro — a single drop of 226 m (741 ft), 251 m with the cascades, about 100 m wide, among the most powerful on earth by volume for its height, found by Charles Barrington Brown in 1870; in the national park of 1929, the oldest in the region |
| Terrain | The coastal plain, 10 to 60 km wide, below the sea and polders; the white-sand belt of the bauxite; the highland forest of the Guiana Shield, nine-tenths of the country; the Pakaraima Mountains with the tepuis; the Rupununi savanna of the south |
| Climate | Tropical — hot and humid; two wet seasons on the coast, May to August and December to January; the interior with one |
| Natural hazards | Floods — the coast under the sea, the great flood of January 2005; the sea rising on the seawall; drought in the Rupununi |
| Natural resources | Oil — about 11 billion barrels found in the Stabroek block since 2015; gold; bauxite; diamonds; manganese; timber; shrimp; the forest's carbon |
| Land use | Agricultural land about 8%; forest about 85% — among the most forested countries in the world |
| National parks | Kaieteur National Park, 1929; the Iwokrama forest, a million acres given to the world in 1996; the Kanuku Mountains; Shell Beach with the four turtles; the Kanashen conservation area of the Wai-Wai, the largest |
| UNESCO World Heritage | None inscribed — Georgetown's historic center and Shell Beach on the tentative list |
| Administrative divisions | 10 regions since 1980 — Demerara-Mahaica with Georgetown, Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo the largest, and the rest; the Amerindian villages with their councils and titled lands |
People
| Population | 746,955 (census of 2012); about 830,000 (2025 est.) |
|---|---|
| Population density | About 4 per km² (10 per sq mi) — among the lowest in the world; nine in ten on the coast |
| Population growth | About 0.5% a year — the emigration of a century slowing as the oil workers come |
| Median age | About 28 years |
| Life expectancy | About 70 years |
| Fertility rate | About 2.4 births per woman |
| Urban population | About 27% |
| Adult literacy | About 89% |
| Ethnic groups | Indo-Guyanese about 40%, the descendants of the indentured laborers of 1838–1917; Afro-Guyanese about 29%; mixed about 20%; Amerindian about 10.5% — the Arawak, Carib, Wapishana, Macushi, Wai-Wai and others of nine nations; Chinese, Portuguese and European under 1% (census of 2012) |
| Languages | English official; Creolese spoken by all; the nine Amerindian languages; Guyanese Bhojpuri and the Hindi of the temples nearly gone; Portuguese growing with the Brazilians |
| Religion | Christian about 63% — Pentecostal, Anglican, Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist; Hindu about 25%; Muslim about 7%; the Rastafari and the Obeah of the tradition (census of 2012) |
| Human Development Index | 0.776 (2023 data, 2025 report) — high; about 90th of 193, and climbing with the oil |
| Politics of race | The two parties of two peoples since the 1950s — the Indo-Guyanese PPP and the Afro-Guyanese PNC — and the riots of the 1960s; the election of 2025 the first with a large third force |
| Sport | Cricket — Guyana within the West Indies, Clive Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Lance Gibbs; the Providence Stadium; the Guyana Amazon Warriors; football and the rodeo of Lethem |
| Diaspora | Some 500,000 to a million of Guyanese origin abroad — in the United States, New York above all, Canada, Britain and the Caribbean; more abroad than at home |
Government
| Form of government | Unitary presidential republic under the Constitution of 1980 as reformed — the president head of state and government, the leader of the list with the most votes at the general election; a prime minister as first vice president; the National Assembly of 65 |
|---|---|
| President | Mohamed Irfaan Ali (People's Progressive Party/Civic), since 2 August 2020 — the ninth; born 25 April 1980 at Leonora, a housing minister before; the first Muslim head of state of the region; sworn in for a second and final term on 7 September 2025 |
| Prime Minister | Mark Phillips (PPP/C), since 2 August 2020 — a retired brigadier, chief of staff of the defense force 2013–2016; the first vice president |
| The 2025 election | Held 1 September 2025: the PPP/C 55.3% and 36 of 65 seats; We Invest in Nationhood, WIN, 24.9% and 16, founded in June 2025 by the gold trader Azruddin Mohamed, sanctioned by the United States in 2024 for tax evasion on gold exports; A Partnership for National Unity, APNU, under Aubrey Norton 17.8% and 12, its worst result, 31 seats lost; Forward Guyana 1; turnout 58%; declared by the elections commission at midnight on 7 September and the observers endorsing it, unlike 2020; gunfire from the Venezuelan bank on an election boat the eve of the vote |
| The 2020 election | Held 2 March 2020 and disputed for five months — the fraudulent tabulation of Region Four, the recount under CARICOM's eyes, the courts; the PPP/C declared the winner with 33 seats to 31 on 2 August 2020; the officials charged |
| Parliament | The National Assembly — 65 members elected for five years by proportional representation, 40 from the national list and 25 from the regions; the speaker Manzoor Nadir |
| The next election | Due by 2030 — with Ali barred from a third term |
| Essequibo | The region west of the Essequibo River — two-thirds of the country, and the sea off it where the oil lies — awarded to British Guiana by the arbitration of 3 October 1899, which Venezuela has rejected since 1962; the Geneva Agreement of 1966; Guyana's case filed at the International Court of Justice in 2018, the court ruling itself competent in 2020 and 2023; Venezuela's referendum of 3 December 2023 claiming the region as a state, its "election" of a governor for it on 25 May 2025, and its naval and border provocations; the court's judgment on the merits awaited; the Argyle declaration of December 2023 renouncing force; the U.S. backing of Guyana |
| Legal system | Common law from England with Roman-Dutch traces in land law; the Caribbean Court of Justice the final appeal since 2005; the Court of Appeal and the High Court |
| Regions | 10, each with a regional democratic council; the Amerindian village councils under the Amerindian Act of 2006 |
| United Nations | Member since 20 September 1966; a Security Council seat in 2024–25 |
| Memberships | CARICOM, whose secretariat has sat in Georgetown since 1973; the Commonwealth; the OAS; the Union of South American Nations, lapsed; the Non-Aligned Movement; the WTO; the Amazon Cooperation Treaty |
Economy
| GDP (nominal) | About US$28 billion (2025, IMF) — from US$5 billion in 2019, the economy more than quintupled in six years |
|---|---|
| GDP per capita | About US$33,000 (2025) — the highest in South America and the Caribbean on paper, from US$6,000 in 2019 |
| GDP per capita (PPP) | About US$85,000 (2025) |
| GDP growth | 43.6% in 2024 and about 10% in 2025 — the fastest-growing economy in the world every year from 2022 to 2024, above 30% a year on average through Ali's first term |
| Economy by sector | Oil about 60% of GDP; services about 25%; agriculture, mining and manufacturing the rest |
| Currency | Guyanese dollar (GYD) |
| Oil | The Stabroek block, 180 km offshore — ExxonMobil's Liza discovery of May 2015 and about 30 more, some 11 billion barrels; production from December 2019, about 640,000 barrels a day by mid-2025 from the Liza, Payara and Yellowtail projects, toward 900,000 in 2026 and 1.3 million by 2027; ExxonMobil, Hess and China's CNOOC; the 2016 contract's 2% royalty and 50–50 profit split the standing quarrel |
| The fund | The Natural Resource Fund of 2019, revised 2021 — the oil revenues held and drawn for the budget; some US$2.5 billion drawn in 2025; the cash grants to households of 2024–25 |
| Gold and bauxite | Gold from the interior — about 500,000 ounces a year, the miners of the Mazaruni and the Cuyuni, the second export before oil; bauxite from Linden since 1916; diamonds |
| Agriculture | Sugar, the plantation crop of three centuries, the Guyana Sugar Corporation's estates shrinking; rice, the Indo-Guyanese crop of the coast, exported to the Caribbean and Venezuela; shrimp and fish; timber |
| Carbon | The forest's carbon sold — the Norway agreement of 2009 for US$250 million, and the sale of jurisdictional credits to Hess for US$750 million in 2022, the first of their kind |
| Public finances | A budget above US$6 billion in 2025, doubled in three years — the roads, the bridges, the gas-to-energy plant, the hospitals; public debt about 25% of GDP; the inflation of the boom in Georgetown's rents |
| Income classification | High income (World Bank), since 2023 — from lower-middle income in 2019 |
Transport & infrastructure
| Main airport | Cheddi Jagan International Airport at Timehri, 40 km from Georgetown, expanded 2023; Eugene F. Correia at Ogle for the interior and the islands |
|---|---|
| Airlines | No national carrier since Guyana Airways closed in 2001; Caribbean Airlines, American, JetBlue, British Airways since 2023, Copa; Trans Guyana within |
| Main ports | Georgetown on the Demerara; the deep-water port planned; the oil loaded at sea |
| Railways | None — the Georgetown–Plaisance line of 1848 was the first railway in South America, closed with the rest in 1974 |
| Roads | About 4,000 km (2,500 mi), about a fifth paved; the Linden–Lethem road to Brazil being paved; the new Demerara River Bridge of 2025; the Takutu bridge to Brazil of 2009; the Corentyne bridge to Suriname under construction |
| Rivers | The ferries and speedboats of the Essequibo, the Demerara and the Berbice — the roads of the interior; the Berbice bridge of 2008 |
History in dates
| c. 3000 BC | The first Amerindian settlers |
|---|---|
| 1616 | The Dutch at Kyk-over-al on the Essequibo |
| 1763 | The Berbice rebellion of Cuffy, 23 February |
| 1814 | The three colonies ceded to Britain; British Guiana, 1831 |
| 1834 · 1838 | Emancipation; the first Indian indentured laborers arrive, 5 May 1838 |
| 1899 | The Essequibo arbitration award, 3 October |
| 1953 | The first election under universal suffrage — Cheddi Jagan; the constitution suspended, 9 October |
| 1964 | The riots; Forbes Burnham prime minister |
| 1966 | Independence, 26 May |
| 1970 | The Co-operative Republic, 23 February |
| 1978 | Jonestown, 18 November — 918 dead |
| 1980 | The Burnham constitution, 6 October |
| 1992 | The first free election in 28 years — Cheddi Jagan president, 9 October |
| 2005 | The great flood, January |
| 2015 | Oil found at Liza, 20 May |
| 2019 | The first oil, 20 December |
| 2020 | The election of 2 March; Irfaan Ali sworn in, 2 August |
| 2023 | Venezuela's referendum on the Essequibo, 3 December; the Argyle declaration, 14 December |
| 2025 | Ali re-elected, 1 September; inaugurated, 7 September |
Records & firsts
| The fastest-growing economy in the world | 2022 to 2024, above 30% a year |
|---|---|
| The only English-speaking country in South America | And the only one that drives on the left, with Suriname |
| The largest single-drop waterfall by volume | Kaieteur, 226 m |
| The first railway in South America | Georgetown to Plaisance, 1848 |
| The highest income per head on the continent | About US$33,000, on paper |
| A capital below the sea | Georgetown behind its wall |
| The Lost World | Mount Roraima |
| Among the most forested countries | About 85% |
| The first sale of jurisdictional carbon credits | To Hess, US$750 million, 2022 |
| Jonestown | The largest loss of American civilian life before 2001, 1978 |
| The giant water lily | Victoria amazonica, of the arms |
| Two-thirds of the country claimed | The Essequibo, before the world court |
Frequently asked questions
What is the official name of Guyana?
The Co-operative Republic of Guyana — the name taken on 23 February 1970 when the country became a republic four years after independence from Britain, the "co-operative" for the socialism of Forbes Burnham that has long since gone. British Guiana before 1966, and the Dutch colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice before 1814; the name is an Amerindian word, "the land of many waters," for the rivers that cut it. The three Guianas were British, Dutch and French; only Guyana kept the name.
What is the capital of Guyana?
Georgetown, at the mouth of the Demerara on the Atlantic coast — the Dutch Stabroek of 1781, renamed for George III in 1812, a city of wooden colonial buildings and canals built below sea level behind a seawall, with about 120,000 people in the city and 200,000 in its area; St. George's Cathedral, of wood, among the tallest timber buildings in the world. Linden, the bauxite town on the Demerara, and New Amsterdam on the Berbice are the other towns; Lethem the town of the savanna on the Brazilian border.
How big is Guyana, and how many people live there?
About 214,969 km² (83,000 sq mi) — a little smaller than Britain, about the size of Idaho — on the north coast of South America between Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname, nine-tenths of it rainforest and savanna where almost no one lives, the people crowded on the coastal strip. The census of 2012, the last published, counted 746,955; the results of the census of 2022 have been long delayed; the UN estimates about 830,000 for 2025 — the smallest population on the South American mainland, and one of the largest diasporas for its size, with more Guyanese abroad than at home.
What are the highest and lowest points of Guyana?
Mount Roraima, 2,835 m (9,301 ft), the tabletop mountain where the borders of Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil meet — Conan Doyle's Lost World, its plateau a world of its own — and the Atlantic, which the coast lies below at high tide, held off by the seawall and the Dutch drains. Kaieteur Falls on the Potaro, with a single drop of 226 m, is among the most powerful waterfalls on earth, four times the height of Niagara.
What currency does Guyana use?
The Guyanese dollar (ISO code GYD, G$), issued by the Bank of Guyana since 1965, at about 209 to the U.S. dollar, a rate held nearly fixed through the oil boom. Clocks keep Guyana Time, UTC−4, all year. Guyana drives on the left, the only country of the South American mainland to do so with Suriname.
Who governs Guyana?
President Irfaan Ali of the People's Progressive Party/Civic, head of state and government since 2 August 2020, when the five-month standoff over the election of that year ended, and re-elected on 1 September 2025 with 55.3 percent of the vote and 36 of the 65 seats — sworn in on 7 September for a second and final term. The surprise of that election was the second place of We Invest in Nationhood, a party founded three months earlier by the gold trader Azruddin Mohamed, under U.S. sanctions, which pushed the old opposition APNU to third; Mark Phillips is prime minister. The government presides over the fastest-growing economy in the world and faces Venezuela's claim to the Essequibo, two-thirds of the country, before the International Court of Justice.
World knowledge, A to Z — the flags of every country, the sciences, places, people and more.
We Value Your Opinion Comments