Ujamaa and Proper business practices

 to support the Liberation of African People

In the spirit of Kwanzaa, the Nguzu Saba and particularly Ujamaa, it becomes vital to the building of a stronger community of African people by creating economic institutions and networks of businesses and other enterprises that, not only support the individual proprietors of these business and enterprises, but also support and provide greater opportunity for growth, improvement, and independence for the community as a whole.

Ujamaa, the principal of cooperative economics, dictates the idea that our businesses should be collective in nature and benefit the individuals, families, and communities that it serves. This is in contrast to the more capitalist model that leans towards individualistic ownership and personal gain, usually at the expense of others.   Stated another way, the businesses in our community should benefit the collective wellbeing of our community as well as helping to further our goal of liberation and independence.  

In most instances, “making a living” requires us as African people to work within the same economic/political system that we ultimately which to create an alternative.  We do this in order to survive, but ultimately hope to free ourselves from our dependence on this system. For those of us that consider ourselves part of the freedom/liberation movement, developing our business is not just about our individual economic advancement and a path to personal wealth and status.  For us, it represents an opportunity to advance the economic independence of our African community as a whole, thereby contributing to our struggle for Freedom. For us as conscious African people, the businesses we start or are a part of must be consistent our goal of growth, independence for our people.  

            In order to active our economic goals as a community, we must adhere to a set of principals to support these goals.  We must also hold ourselves accountable to each other with regard to these principals.

Firstly, the businesses that we create or bring to the community must actually offer value for whatever goods and/or services that it provides. Unlike in western society where advisements are often filled with lies and half-truths in order to get you to spent your money without solving the problem, we must have a responsibility to be accurate about the claims you make for your products/good/services. This is the rather simple idea that whatever you are selling must be worth whatever you are asking for it, and that it must provide whatever you claim it will provide.

            Secondly, our businesses must not be exploitative or the poverty and desperation we find in the community by offering our people “pie in the sky” schemes with the lure of greed. This is particular relevant to businesses that lure individual or groups to “buy” into their business with the promise of “ownership”, when in reality they are only buying into “salesmanship” and the only way they can see any individual profit is to, ultimately, convince a lot more of our people to pay to be salespersons from the business, still with the lure of ownership. These types of pyramids schemes, ultimately, only sell membership and the products are a façade, accounting for little of the profit.  Any approaches that require you to bring their family and friends into a business in order for you to be successful should be avoided.  Beside the obvious exploitation of the trusting members of the community that pay to join and/or convince other to pay to join, these types of businesses exploit our people’s yearning for independence and replace it with salesmanship for large white corporations, still with the guise of ownership.

The businesses we bring in our community must not be exploitative of any people weaknesses a result of our experience in this system of governance.

Our businesses should be consistent with the principals of the NGUZU SABA in that they must:

·        (UMOJA) Promote unity in our community.

·        (KUJICHAGULIA) Support our goal to control the direction of growth and improvement in our community.

·        (UJIMA) Be accountable to the members of the African community and reinvest in our community.

·        (UJAMAA) Promote corporation with other businesses within our community.

·        (NIA) Support the ultimate purpose of our community to be truly independent of the.

·        (KUUMBA) Reflect and utilize the creativity in the community in finding solutions to the problems that plague us and bringing us close to liberation.

·        (IMANI) Promote faith in the viability and righteousness of our struggle towards liberation and freedom from the global oppressive system of white supremacy and dominance.

In addition, we as a community, must pledge to support the businesses that live up to these principles with initiative such as 10-10-50.org, which encourage us to spend, at a minimum, an additional $50 from your monthly budget to support African (Black) owned and operated businesses.

We must live up to these principals in order to achieve independence, liberation and freedom for African people.