The Guyana Global Consulting Group will on Friday be hosting an information session and networking seminar aimed at helping youths and women to build their capacity to participate in the oil and gas sector.
“For Guyana, my interest is to build the capacity of young people and women to participate in oil and gas. You would notice that oil and gas training is expensive and companies will only sponsor you if you are lucky to get into one. You have to look at the percentage of the population that will benefit from the industry. We are looking at setting up networks of youths and women, and even men to join a membership that will help them to get more affordable training in oil and gas,” Fatu Gbedema, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Group, told Stabroek News during an interview.
Gbedema, who grew up in Liberia and Ghana, has over eight years of experience working in Guyana, dating back to 1996.
The consulting group was developed in November last year, a month after she once again returned to Guyana, where she is currently residing.
Gbedema said Friday’s event, which will be held from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm at the Marriott Hotel, will also facilitate discussions on innovative ways of getting internationally-certified training in the country. The event will also feature discussions on the accreditation of companies offering training, what it means to be industry certified and what competencies companies will be looking for. “What kind of opportunities people will have to participate apart from being on the rig? Age and gender will be an issues so we want to give ideas to all the different groups about what the possibilities are,” she pointed out.
She added that the Group has also partnered with a company in Europe that offers oil and gas training but she was not open to giving its name.
“The whole idea is many people are going to be engaging with different organisations to share knowledge opportunities to set up joint ventures. From an organisational development standpoint, when you are setting partnerships there are so many things that people need to take cognisance of, such as sharing information and knowledge. When people come into countries where people have a lower level of exposure to legalities in contracts, people will not protect themselves and so we will discuss what are some of the things they need to do to protect themselves,” she added.
Gbedema said the Group is hoping to attract anyone who is interested in learning more about the opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship in oil and gas or even persons who are already working but want to specialise in a field in the sector.
She said while persons have been discussing whether Guyana’s oil finds are a blessing or a curse, even if it is a blessing then the country has to strengthen its arms to take hold of them. “We have a situation where we need to get more and more people trained and ready to work by first oil. The training has to be ramped up. Is Guyana going to wait for four years to get university students? So, you have to look at the short term avenues and you spend money on that,” she noted.
Gbedema, studied political science with a minor in mass communication specialising in print journalism in Liberia, after which she worked for the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) as a Liaison and Social Mobilisation Officer.
Because of a civil war in her home country, she moved to Ghana and later enrolled into the University of Ghana’s graduate programme for Inter-national Affairs and Development and received a Master’s in International Economics with specialisation on Law of the Sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
“That gives me the knowledge of legal cases that countries have experienced when it comes to their exploitation of their EEZ and that includes oil and gas,” she said.
She subsequently went to work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for five years as a Social Affairs Officer who was responsible for 120,000 refugees from Togo and Liberia. This project, she said, gave her responsibility to manage a US$20 million programme at the age of 27.
Despite the challenge, she pushed on and eventually ended up at a German Foundation responsible for training civil society as well as the private sector in building their competence for governance.
After that, she applied for a position at the United Nations Volunteer Programme and was assigned to Guyana in 1996 – the first time she visited the country.
She then enrolled at the University of Maryland College Park, where she read for a Master’s of Science in Management and Strategy before working with the World Bank as a Training Associate in the Controller’s Office. She spent three years there before being employed at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Head of Personnel in Guyana until 2012 before returning to her home country to become the Head of Government Affairs for their National Oil Company for three years.
She said she was involved in the processes that facilitated the creation of their petroleum act, local content policy and public and national awareness and engagements.
She spent another two years working for another NGO as a country manager and then came back to Guyana last October, after which she developed the Group, which is now 51% owned by Guyanese. Its goal is to support and provide advisory services to the public sector in terms of oil and gas governance and sharing best practices. “We have been doing some consultancy work with the government, writing proposals and giving them ideas about the best way forward,” she said.
