Afro-Caribbean Busines Network Presents A Canadian Black Empowerment Manifesto 2.0

The Manifesto highlights the many benefits of partnering with Black-owned business operating within Canada

Starting a business can be terrifying, starting a business as a black entrepreneur in Canada is twice as scary. Unlike many other cultures within Canada, the vast majority of black entrepreneurs do not derive from generational wealth; most of them are first or second-generation immigrants with dreams of ownership and making lasting contributions to their community.

With a deep void for financial support and genuine business mentorship for black entrepreneurs, in comes the Afro Caribbean Business Network (ACBN) under the steady hands of Ryan O’Neil Knight, President, and Chris Beth-Cowie, Vice President. Together, with decades of service to their community and the business sector, they continue to instil the knowledge entrepreneurs need to create financial security and independence.

Today ACBN released the second edition of the Canadian Black Empowerment Manifesto (CBEM). With the second version of CBEM, the organization established a clearer definition of what constitutes a Black Empowerment Vision Criteria (BEVC), founded upon six criteria, each with critical measures. ACBN turned to academic and principal researcher Errol A. Gibbs to author the second edition of BEV. The new manifesto will serve as a blueprint with its primary focus on life in the North American Diaspora, more so indicative of the Canadian experience.

These criteria are Holistic, Permanent, Macro-level, Job Creation, Wealth Creation, and Digital and Physical Infrastructure. They establish new benchmarks for future Black empowerment initiatives administered in the public and private sectors. Furthermore, these six criteria will enable executive leaders (government, corporate, and community) to measure the benefits of their multi-million-dollar program expenditures, projected on a Black History Month Score Card (BHMSC) ─ yearly.

Gibbs’ CBEM brain trust also proposes creating a Black History Month Score Card (BHMSC) to present analytics each February of systematic progress. To achieve these pioneering objectives, ACBN/Gibbs makes a compelling call in their revolutionary (240 pages) “blueprint” for new integrated infrastructures (strategic, tactical, and operational), unlike the ineffective “organizational silo” models of the past that have suffocated the growth of the Black community. 

“The vision that ACBN/Gibbs presents calls for new strategic and administrative infrastructures, unlike the ineffective organizational silo” models of the past that have suffocated the growth of the Black community.” Said, President Ryan O’Neil Knight

“ACBN is a vanguard community that believes the Black community is at the right intersection in Black history to help elevate the Canadian society to rise beyond the historical impediments of race, colour, cultural, social, and economic injustices, and the Black versus White racial divide” Said Vice- President Ryan O’Neil Knight, President

The ACBN’s extensive body of work makes a compelling call for a change in mindset ―particularly an “industrial mindset,” more importantly, to embrace CHANGE, which is indispensable as the world enters the transformational Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) Industry 4.0. A reading of the CBEM will inform stakeholders interested in pioneering unique collaboration among the Black community, governmental, public, and private sectors. 

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