Work and wealth together
Ujamaa imagines economic life through the ethic of familyhood and shared responsibility.
Black Storytellers Alliance / Nguzo Saba
Day Four • Fourth Principle
COOPERATIVE ECONOMICSUJAMAA
To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses to support one another and profit from them.
FAMILYHOODSHARED WORKSHARED WEALTHECONOMIC CARE
Ujamaa / 01
The principle
Build wealth like a family.
Ujamaa means familyhood and suggests a sharing of work and wealth in the manner of a family.
Social wealth belongs to the masses of the people who created it. Sharing wealth is a form of communication exchange, emphasizing the connection between the individual and the community.
Ujamaa is based on the assumption of human equality. It is wrong for one individual to dominate and exploit another — especially within one’s own community.
Core thought
Build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses to support one another and profit from them.
Value created by the people
Social wealth belongs to the masses of the people who created it.
No exploitation
Human equality rejects domination and exploitation, especially within one’s own community.
Ujamaa / 02
The deeper practice
Economics is relationship.
Ujamaa frames exchange as a relationship between the individual and the community, not simply as an individual pursuit.
Create our own institutions
Build and maintain stores, shops, and other businesses rooted in the community.
Support one another
Use our economic choices to strengthen one another.
Connect wealth to community
Treat the sharing of wealth as communication and exchange between individuals and the community.
Ujamaa / 03
Cultural foundation
Togetherness has an economic form.
The interlocking symbol reflects a principle in which family, work, wealth, and community remain connected.
Build our own
Create and maintain community-rooted economic institutions.
Support one another
Economic activity should strengthen relationships within the community.
Reject exploitation
Cooperative economics rests on the assumption of human equality.
Ujamaa / 04
Living the principle
Practice cooperative economics.
Ujamaa calls us to make economic choices that connect personal benefit with the well-being of the community.
Create community-rooted businesses and institutions.
Choose to support one another through intentional economic exchange.
Remember that wealth is connected to the people whose work creates it.