Good practice Imported

GOAL — Guyana's National Scholarship Programme Building Local Talent for the Oil, Gas and Maritime Economy

Guyana · Georgetown · See the Guyana profile · See the Georgetown profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 66% 62/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Guyana's government-funded GOAL programme has awarded more than 39,000 free scholarships since 2021 — from vocational certificates to PhDs, including dedicated oil, gas and maritime tracks — to build a domestic skilled workforce as the petroleum sector booms.

6,280 scholarships

Scholarships awarded, 2021 (2021)

7,410 scholarships

Scholarships awarded, 2022 (2022)

7,752 scholarships

Scholarships awarded, 2023 (2023)

8,316 scholarships

Scholarships awarded, 2024 (2024)

39,000+ scholarships

Cumulative scholarships awarded since 2021 (2021–2025)

~6,624 scholars

Scholars who completed their programmes

100+ courses

GROW strand vocational courses offered

GOAL — Guyana's National Scholarship Programme Building Local Talent for the Oil, Gas and Maritime Economy

Details

Maturity: Scaling
Promoter: Government of Guyana — Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL)
Period: 2021–present
Keywords: workforce development, oil and gas, maritime training, higher education access

Context

As Guyana's economy is transformed by offshore oil production, the government launched GOAL (Guyana Online Academy of Learning) in 2021 to fund free tertiary and vocational study for citizens and build a domestic skilled workforce.

Objectives

GOAL aims to prepare Guyanese citizens for the growing oil, gas and maritime economy, offering scholarships from short vocational certificates with no formal entry requirements up to diplomas, bachelor's, postgraduate, master's and PhD study.

Activities

The programme includes specialised tracks built with partner institutions such as the AA Maritime and Offshore Training Institute (AAMOTI), covering marine cadetship, navigation watch, engineering watch and electro-technical officer training, plus a GROW strand offering more than 100 short vocational courses; application cycles continue annually, with a 2026 intake opened in October 2025.

Results

Awards grew every year — 6,280 in 2021, 7,410 in 2022, 7,752 in 2023 and 8,316 in 2024 — taking the cumulative total above 39,000 scholarships by 2025, with around 6,624 scholars having completed their programmes.

Conclusions

GOAL's published figures are administrative enrolment and completion counts rather than an independent evaluation of graduates' employment or wage outcomes, so its effect on retaining trained citizens in Guyana's labour market is not yet documented, and its scale-up has relied on continued petroleum revenue whose long-term stability is untested.

Implementation

Indicative cost: High (€500k–€5M)
Time to results: Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills: Government of Guyana (GOAL programme), AA Maritime and Offshore Training Institute (AAMOTI), delivery partner for maritime tracks, other partner training institutions delivering GROW vocational courses

Conditions for success

Sustained annual government funding tied to petroleum revenue
Partnerships with specialised training institutions for sector-specific tracks
Open eligibility from vocational certificates (no formal entry requirements) through PhD level

Common failure modes

Funding base depends on continued petroleum revenue, whose long-term stability is untested
No independent evaluation yet of graduate employment or wage outcomes, or of retention in Guyana's labour market

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-08-17
Government of Guyana — Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) — accessed 2026-08-17
Guyana Standard: GOAL announces 2026 scholarship intake — accessed 2026-08-17
iKnowGuyana: GOAL — Oil and Gas Training in Guyana — accessed 2026-08-17
News Room Guyana: Application portal for GOAL scholarship programmes open — accessed 2026-08-17

Attachments

Source image

Quality score: 62/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported

Top 66% in this catalogue (797 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Evidence of impact / measured results1/3

Guyana Standard reports over 39,000 scholarships awarded since 2021, but published figures are administrative enrollment/completion counts (about 6,624 completions) with no independent evaluation yet of graduates' employment or wage outcomes.

Transferability / demonstrated replication2/3

Funding tertiary and vocational study from petroleum-sector public revenue mirrors human-capital-fund approaches used by other resource-rich states, though this specific GOAL design has not been documented as adopted elsewhere.

Scalability3/3

Annual awards grew every year from 6,280 (2021) to 8,316 (2024), reaching over 39,000 scholarships cumulatively — evidence of sustained scale-up across certificate-to-PhD levels nationwide.

Sustainability / continuity2/3

The programme has run continuously since 2021 with a 2026 intake already announced, though its funding is tied to Guyana's petroleum revenue and its long-run continuity beyond the current oil boom is untested.

Innovation2/3

GOAL pairs free online/blended delivery with specialised sectoral tracks (e.g. maritime officer training with AAMOTI) built specifically to meet a fast-growing industry's skills gap, a distinctive combination for a small state.

Inclusiveness / equity2/3

Scholarships are free and open nationally across certificate, diploma and degree levels, and over 100 vocational courses have no formal entry requirements, though no data on regional or gender distribution of awards was found.

Multi-stakeholder collaboration1/3

GOAL is primarily a single-government programme, with specialised delivery partnerships such as AAMOTI for maritime training rather than a broad multi-stakeholder coalition.

Cite this

Evidoria. GOAL — Guyana's National Scholarship Programme Building Local Talent for the Oil, Gas and Maritime Economy. Persistent ID: 7f2d87c2-ccba-4e20-9c79-8f4133b2a436.

Export as decision brief (PDF)

Similar practices you may find useful

★ 57

Guyana's Local Content Act — Mandated Ownership, Staffing and Spend Quotas in the Oil Sector

Guyana

Guyana's 2021 Local Content Act requires oil operators to use, train and grow Guyanese-owned suppliers — 51% minimum local ownership, …

★ 100

work2future

United States of America

work2future is Silicon Valley’s Workforce Investment Network. It is a part of the national workforce development system as authorized by …

★ 91

TRIEC Mentoring Partnership — Toronto's Skilled-Immigrant Employment Bridge

Canada

Since 2003 Toronto's TRIEC has matched 5,300+ skilled immigrants with professional mentors; a 2020 evaluation found participants 2.5x more likely …

★ 91

London Living Wage Policy

United Kingdom

The (true) Living Wage is an hourly rate of pay set independently and updated annually (not the UK government's National …