The Aims of the Organisation are:
1. To work in partnership with individuals and organisations for a fair and just society which empowers African people in Britain and affords them with an equal opportunity to work, learn and live free from Afriphobia, negative discrimination and covert and overt prejudice based on gender, ethnicity, culture, physical ability and/or class. As such, we seek to work in partnership with individuals and organisations that;
• Increase employment opportunities for African people in Britain and in particular encourage and support programmes and enterprises that aim to develop and establish African owned businesses with a community, corporate, environmental and social responsibility policy.
• Increase access to higher and alternative education for African people in Britain, in particular those elements of education that involve the development of cultural knowledge and education programmes that involve exchange, interactions and placements in Africa and across the Diaspora with African people and communities.
• Reduce human rights violations by police and other associated central and local government institutions on African people in Britain particularly though ensuring that African Britons are aware of their legal and social rights as citizens in the UK.
2. To promote African self determination via the media and reduce misrepresentation of African people, culture and history by;
• Creating cultural media resources of diverse educational, historical, social, artistic and current African interests presented and produced by African people with the primary aim of empowering and informing.
• Maintaining, expanding and continually developing Ligali’s online resources (websites) to ensure that they are informative, up to date and educative.
• Establishing and/or supporting independent African British national TV and radio stations, production companies, print media and advertising companies that adhere to a principle of social, community and political responsibility.
• Ensuring that the groups within our community who face additional prejudices are integrated into every element of media and ‘storytelling’ outlets, in particular women, the elderly, people with disabilities, the young, the working class and unemployed, carers, the mentally ill, victims and survivors of crime and institutional racism and migrants.
• Promoting Pan Africanism, African spirtuality and the 'Africa by Africans' philosophy throughout the media.
• Monitoring, investigating and publicly challenging any media institutions that publish, broadcast, perform or distribute material that is defamatory, anti-African, sexist and offensive to African people in Britain and throughout the world. We aim to eradicate negative ethnic and cultural stereotypes and images across the media and challenge historically ingrained perceptions that stigmatise and caricature African people.
• Challenging media and institutional use of offensive, degrading and repressive terminology that seeks to dehumanise African people and disconnect them from their culture and history.
• Encouraging media institutions to incorporate sufficient quantity of quality African British programming into their schedules, particularly that which does not conform to a stereotypical and offensive remit.
• Establishing and/or supporting independent African British national TV and radio stations, production companies, print media and advertising companies that adhere to a principle of social, community and political responsibility.
3. To reduce social exclusion and achieve institutional acknowledgment of African Britons as stakeholders in Britain by;
• Seeking central and local government usage of 'African British' as an official legal identity for a British national with an ethnically African parent.
• Seeking central and local government recognition and institutional support of February as International African History Month.
• Establishing official periods during which African people can celebrate, commemorate, remember and inform themselves about their own history and culture. e.g. African Remembrance in August.
• Supporting campaigns promoting the need for reparations to Africa and Africans.
4. To raise the academic achievements of African British pupils by;
• Seeking and promoting the inclusion of consistent and effective mentoring programmes within all schools for both African boys and girls.
• Seeking enrichment of the national curriculum by the inclusion of African and African diasporic history, in particular the history of the Continent and its people prior to the Maafa (european and arab colonialism and subsequent enslavement regimes).
• Reducing pupil exclusions and establishing the procedure to only be used as a last resort.
• Supporting and promoting organisations that assist the 'invisible children', who fall through the gap in mainstream academic institutions.
• Advocating the training and education of all teachers in effective and interactive cultural diversity awareness.
• Supporting and encouraging the establishment of organisations and supplementary services that promote high academic and creative achievement of young African Britons, particularly those independent education platforms that have an Africentric ideology and method.
• Promoting awareness, understanding and respect of African culture to other ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority in Britain.
5. To tackle the root causes of violence and crime towards and within the African British community by;
• Encouraging the African community to become aware of their social, human and legal rights.
• Encouraging and supporting the establishment of victim and survivor support organisations and initiatives that provide a forum and assistance to African British victims of crime.
• Discouraging the use of redundant initiatives and implementing workable and practical solutions to crime through effective analysis and subsequent holistic policy forming and application.
• Seeking a sufficient quantity of community youth provisions with a sustainable development plan including supplementary schools/services, after school programs and youth clubs offering a safe environment for culturally empowering programmes.
• Supporting other organisations that deal effectively with crime within and towards the African British community.
6. To act as an independent and representative body, campaigning, protesting and debating issues relevant to the African British community’s social, economic and political concern’s by;
• Establishing a legitimate political forum from which to voice African British concerns.
• Supporting initiatives that allow the African British voice to be heard, undiluted in multiple formats by encouraging African Britons to use art (spoken word / film / music / photography) as a means of political, cultural and spiritual expression.
• Creating and maintaining our own media network.
• Encouraging young people to express themselves in political terms with an effective outlet and the means to self-empower in order to effect a positive and progressive change.
7. To encourage productive Pan African relations by forging strategic relationships with Africans in the Diaspora and in Africa by;
• Promoting awareness of other Pan African organisations and initiatives.
• Promoting and supporting organisations that are involved in conveying economic, populace, academic and social resources to the Continent and other Diasporic African nations.
8. To increase social and intercommunity awareness and promote enhanced facilities, research and/or treatment for, but not exclusive to, the following health issues;
• Mental health, quality of care for the elderly, disabilities, Sickle cell, Cancer, diabetes, strokes, hypertension, heart problems, pregnancy, diet and nutrition and other health concerns specific to the African British community.
• Where appropriate to encourage a natural and healthy lifestyle as a means to prevent serious and minor ailments that affect the African British community.
9. To increase African British engagement with the political processes by;
• Promoting and encouraging the sustained development of alternative methods of political engagement that are not limited to mainstream political processes.
• Monitoring and holding central and local government accountable for the delivery of solutions addressing African concerns made in Manifesto pledges and public statements.
• Monitoring, challenging and holding to account African British politicians and other ‘community representatives’ who make commitments and promises regarding local services, the implementation of solutions and the social progression of the African British community.
Last updated: 14 November 2008
Authors: Toyin Agbetu / Emma Pierre-Joseph
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