As we approach the National Black People’s Day of Action 2016, taking place Wednesday March 2^nd Afrika Speaks with Alkebu-Lan takes a look at the main them of the day ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT! As well as a details focus on the iNAPP Constitution & Manifesto, the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament will take an in depth look at what it takes to Build the National Afrikan People’s Credit Union.

Following a very informative presentation from Sister Lorna Campbell at iNAPP’s General Peoples Assembly in January, the assembly resolved to engage a feasibility study in to the viability for establishing the credit union within the 6 month to 2 year time frame specified. When successful, the Credit Union has the potential to form a basis for generating and sustaining the kind of wealth necessary to engage in the community institution building programme outlined in the NAPPS’s Manifesto.

The manifesto also outlines the context within which this economic development takes place; identifying many key indicators of Afrikan Economic status, including:

• Afrikans in the UK are for all practical purposes landless, in tern of ownership and access. This is relatively the same, in respect of the masses of Afrikan people in other parts of the world, where foreign companies buy out huge proportions of the most arable and mineral rich lands.

• Whilst a number of Afrikans have private ownership of mortgaged property for living purposes, overall ownership and control of properties as communal or commercial spaces and collective assets is equally negligible, save for some church buildings.

• Ditto the ownership of industries and factories, which are almost nonexistent in the Afrikan community. In fact, we have been reduced to perpetual consumers rather than producers.

• Afrikans are also grossly underrepresented in the ownership of all forms of assets, compare to other groups of people in the UK (whether individually or collectively), and thus manifest a relative low capacity for the accumulation of wealth.

• While other communities retain and circulate 70%-90% of their incomes (indian, Chinese, Jews, etc), the Afrikan community manages less than 10%, owing to a severe lack of economic infrastructure and cultural and community consciousness. Thus while the spending patterns of the aforementioned are said to be circular ours are linear.

• Conspicuous consumption, name-brand obsessions and other behaviours, not conducive to Afrikan community economic development, causes low savings ratios and waste, especially among our young people.

• Acquiring loans from the bank to start up or expand businesses remains a challenge to the Afrikan community as banks seem reluctant to dispense loans, by dint of racial profiling.

• Disproportionately high unemployment up to three times that of the white community, and underrepresentation in professions such as medicine, law, engineering, science and technology, etc.

• Academic underachievement has a direct and devastating impact on the economic condition of our community and even more so a miseducation curriculum which is void of preparation for Afrikan nation building and, in context, economic development.

As a result the iNAPP proposes the following possible as remedies for this condition:

• Carryout a comprehensive research into the financial and economic challenges facing Afrikans in the UK.

• Devise a comprehensive programme and infrastructure for the economic development of the iNAPP and for the Afrikan people domiciled in the UK, based on the Ujamaa (communal-cooperative) model.

• Generate assets (land, property, capital, businesses, industries) and revenue for building and sustaining Afrikan institutions; to create employment within the Afrikan community and enable the retention and intra-circulation of community income for community development.

• Establish a treasury/exchequer for the management and budgeting of the revenue of the parliament.

• Promote financial literacy and a culture and practice of strategic wealth creation among Afrikan people, with a commitment to service to the community.

• Restore the Afrikan in the UK to being a producer nation rather than a consumer people.

• Create credit unions for cooperative financial investments, as well as promoting financial thrift, providing credit at competitive rates for its members and providing other financial services to individuals and community businesses. This with a view to establishing a national bank of the NAPP, as well as insurance companies, building societies.

• Seek and seize opportunities to invest in our Motherland, Afrika as much for her development, as for our Afrikan Nation of domiciled in the UK.

• Create a national online registry (Black Pages) of Afrikan owned businesses as well as economic and financial practitioners, experts and wealth strategists.

• Train, support and invest in our young people pursuing careers in finance and economics, including university courses.

• Developed and preserved the foregoing as our legacy of communal wealth and economic independence to be bequeathed to our young people the generations to come.

But as always, the iNAPP develops its economic philosophy in concert with the community through a consultative process.

So TONITE we ask the question:

What does Economic Empowerment Look like?

1. Will you be attending the MBPDA 2016?
2. Is a credit union a viable institution for iNAPP to develop?
3. What practices would enable the Afrikan Community to create wealth?
4. Are Black youth more economically astute than their elders?

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AFRIKA SPEAKS with ALKEBU-LAN on GALAXY RADIO!

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