WHY TINY GUYANA IS CURRENTLY GIVING EVERY SUPERPOWER THE MIDDLE FINGER

Georgetown is no longer a sleepy coastal town. It is a shimmering fortress of glass and steel, guarded by a navy that did not exist five years ago. The world’s oil giants are lining up outside a modest government office, waiting for hours just to get a five minute meeting with officials they used to ignore. The balance of power has shifted so far south that the old maps are practically useless. This is a world where the smallest kid on the block found the keys to the global gas station and decided to lock the doors.

These guys in the West think they own the future. They think that because they have the biggest guns and the loudest microphones, they get to decide who eats and who starves. But Guyana just tore up the script. I could not lie, watching a country of barely 800,000 people hold the entire global energy market by the throat is the most satisfying thing I have seen in a decade.

Here is the thing. For years, Guyana was just a footnote in history books, often confused with Ghana or some other “faraway” place by ignorant Western pundits. Then they found the oil. Not just a little bit of oil, but enough to make them the highest per-capita producer on the planet. Suddenly, everyone is their best friend.

But the underdog story gets better. While Venezuela’s Maduro rattles his sabers and threatens to annex half their territory, Guyana is not flinching. They are playing the Americans against the Chinese and the Europeans against each other. They are demanding better deals, higher royalties, and real infrastructure. They are refusing to be another victim of the “resource curse” that has destroyed so many African nations.

Let that sink in. A nation smaller than Nairobi’s metropolitan population is currently outmaneuvering the US State Department and ExxonMobil at the same time. They are using their new wealth to build a regional shield, making it clear that if anyone touches their soil, the global economy will feel the burn.

The “experts” will tell you this is dangerous. They will use big words about regional stability and market volatility. That is just code for “we are scared because we cannot control them.” These superpowers are used to puppet states and “yes men” who trade their country’s future for a Swiss bank account. Guyana is showing that even a small nation can have a spine of steel if they know their worth.

I see the same spark in the eyes of young people here in Kenya and across the continent. We are tired of the “poor us” narrative. We are tired of being the playground for proxy wars. Guyana is the blueprint. They are proving that you do not need a billion people to change the world; you just need to hold the one thing the big boys cannot live without and have the guts to say “no” until the price is right.

The era of the “unimportant” nation is dead. The underdogs are rising, and they are not looking for permission anymore.