Guyana's Silica City

What is silica? This is a naturally occuring and common mineral. Silicon is made from silica. Silicon material is commonly used as a semiconductor in electronics. Guyana has significant deposits of silica. I am guessing that these things would have influenced the naming of Silica City. Similar to how we talk about Silicon Valley.

Guyana's economy is booming as they have become an oil and gas producing nation. I am happy for them and I wish for them that they don't make the mistakes we made here in Trinidad and Tobago. Maintaining a diversified economy will be key. Understanding that tech will be a driver and enabler of country development will also be key.

Silica City has been an idea of President Ali since 2013. Ali has said recently that Silica City will showcase Guyana as a tech-driven economy and society. A major component of this would be BPOs. Silica City will be a smart city. The city will be powered by renewable energy. It will contain an innovation village in which they are in talks with MIT about. It will be a home for startups. I have heard talk of there being a tech university.

The project is attracting many investors. In researching for this blog post I found it hard to get details especially on how technology will be utilised. It would have been nice if the project had a website with these details. I am very interested in the smart city components and I would like to compare those to what we have in our connected Arima smart city project.

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