The African Diaspora have the ability to provide self determination, its the will that we lack

Investors In Community concept artwork for Anansi Village Trust campaign from 2018

Every community requires strong foundations where ever they find themselves in the world, these foundations provide said communities to be socio and economically self determined by underpinning population in a culturally competent way. As we look around we'll see other communities with banks, their own schools, religious buildings that are owned and their own cultural social clubs.

All of these institutions provide community cohesion, from the bank that ring fences money within the community, to business chambers of commerce that enable community businesses to network, align and act as a force, to schools that educate in a culturally competent way and ready our children and young people to be productive contributors to their community.

However when we look around in African Diaspora communities there is no such eco system of institutions tightly coordinated to create community cohesion and security, instead we are reliant on institutions that have traditionally practised institutional racism (Afriphobia) against us. There is a huge price to pay for relying on your traditional adversary and the lack of autonomy is only the start of what dominos out of lazy adoption.

At the same time as we lack the will to establish our own solid institutions, our graduates and brightest and best work within those halls that openly carry out institutional racism and turn a blind eye to it. This is the most insidious form of collaboration because it endorses the practices based on the employee being wage dependent and therefore not feeling in a position to protest or whistle blow.

This is our unfortunate current state of affairs, however we do have options at our disposal to remedy all of the above. The first step is protecting and ring fencing our communities economic income (which should be thought of as our GDP where ever we are), as that income underpins everything within the eco system.

Why do we need our own Chambers of Commerce?

Our businesses working under one chamber of commerce and using our own crypto currency (SableAssent coin on its own Blockchain) that deploys wallets to all of us, in itself creates a central banking system of sorts. Once our businesses adopt the currency (which tokenises African natural resources) consumers will quickly follow and this is how we create a global African Diaspora banking system with the sovereign ability to transfer funds world wide under our own self determination.

It also creates a financial eco system where our money is ring fenced within an African Diasporan economic styem, allowing our funds to circulate many times within our own community and protecting us from external scrutiny (which establishes our global economic security outside of the SWIFT system). The Chambers of Commerce and the crypto currency will also enable our businesses to make collaborative codified decisions that exclusively benefit the African Diaspora.

Having a centralised eco system will increase our community communication and ultimately lead to stronger community cohesion. When we start from the premise that we as the African Diaspora are obligated to uphold, promote and preserve our culture we have a common denominator that encourages us to serve the wider community. This is the code that we have been missing by making employers from outside of our community the focus of our loyalty and beneficiaries of our experience and intellectual capital.

When we start from a socio economic standpoint underpinned by culture our businesses collectively understand that by making a ten percent contribution from their income to our own educational trust (to purchase and convert commercial freeholds and employ teachers), we are ultimately investing in our families and that it what the Investors in Community initiative is all about. Education has to be culturally competent to benefit the child and we can agree that the Western educational institutes that see our children wearing their natural hair as an infraction were not designed to enable us to succeed in society and are focused on producing ethnic minorities who serve a host nation.

Why do we need our own schools?

When we invest in our schools the curriculum will serve our needs and requirements and rites of passage to give our children and young people a high cultural identity self esteem and give them a context within society that enables them to understand what their contribution should be. Rites of passage delivered hand in hand with our children's education also establishes a community code of conduct that is missing across the generational gaps.

Our schools must be under the autonomy of our own community based on our established cultural values in order for our children to be fully self actualising and beneficial contributors to our community. Our children deserve a wrap around care system (as outlined in the public health approach) that takes them from nursery to industry and this is the approach of the Diamond Enterprise Curriculum created by Kay Johnston who has championed capitalising on the enterprising nature of our children.

A curriculum of this nature that infuses rites of passage and an enterprise focus education will only be delivered by a cohesive African Diaspora community who work within a self determined eco system. The impression we make on our children through home life and their education will produce the adult whom we ultimately benefit from as a community or are forced to support and this is why we must take charge of our children's education for the preservation of our community wellbeing.

Once we place our children into schools delivering curriculums such as the Diamond Enterprise Curriculum we'll rise as a community from being at the bottom of every measurable metric. Their education will be delivered with empathy and their career aspirations will be encouraged and not dampened by the unconscious bias of an institutionally racist educational system. we are African Diasporans and our children should know this and not think of themselves as ethnic minorities.

Why do we need our own Community Centres?

There must be a joint communication between our community centres, chambers of commerce and schools in order for us to establish strong African Diaspora community cohesion and this communication should extend to the African Union Diaspora Region Council that represents our interests within the continent. When we act as a global people we'll make a global impact with a collective economic footprint.

The United States and the European Union are two examples of what a collective approach can achieve. The erasing of tariffs and duties, a common purpose with military representation that based on that agenda can embed anywhere, in spite of the fact that this agenda may contravene sovereign state freedoms. These unions understand the nature of a collective force underpinned by a collective economy and no continent has a greater potential to produce such a self determined collective force than Africa underpinned by her natural resources tokenised through our own crypto currency.

Community centres act as hubs that physically connect our people via cultural celebrations, community events, libraries that serve our needs, where generations connect and share the same cultural values etc. An established community centre enables us to deal with external communities on our own terms. Our community centres are extensions of our homes, they are our collective homes that allow and enable us to consistently engage with our neighbours.

How our businesses can donate to our self determined eco system off settable against tax

There must be a joint communication between our community centres, chambers of commerce and schools in order for us to establish strong African Diaspora community cohesion and this communication should extend to the African Union Diaspora Region Council that represents our interests within the continent. When we act as a global people we'll make a global impact with a collective economic footprint.

The United States and the European Union are two examples of what a collective approach can achieve. The erasing of tariffs and duties, a common purpose with military representation that based on that agenda can embed anywhere, in spite of the fact that this agenda may contravene sovereign state freedoms. These unions understand the nature of a collective force underpinned by a collective economy and no continent has a greater potential to produce such a self determined collective force than Africa underpinned by her natural resources tokenised through our own crypto currency.

Community centres act as hubs that physically connect our people via cultural celebrations, community events, libraries that serve our needs, where generations connect and share the same cultural values etc. An established community centre enables us to deal with external communities on our own terms. Our community centres are extensions of our homes, they are our collective homes that allow and enable us to consistently engage with our neighbours.

Our community centres make the bridge between our schools and educational institutions and our chambers of commerce. This eco system that these three staple buildings within our populated communities provide will create the socio economic cohesion that we require to deliver the African Diaspora global community to exercise self determination.

By Dean Okai Snr