The Journal of Development Studies
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Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc
Story
By Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla (translated by Thomas Fazi)
London: Pluto Press, 2020, 192 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9780745341798
Serena Merrino
To cite this article: Serena Merrino (2022) Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story,
The Journal of Development Studies, 58:4, 867-869, DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2021.1994234
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2021.1994234
Published online: 26 Oct 2021.
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The Journal of Development Studies, 2022
Vol. 58, No. 4, 867–872
Book Reviews
Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story
By Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla (translated by Thomas Fazi)
London: Pluto Press, 2020, 192 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9780745341798
‘No one knows how long this story will last. (…) The countdown may have begun’ (p. 4).
Africa’s Last Colonial Currency is a fascinating attempt to disentangle the nexus between France’s mon-
etary authority and geopolitical power in former French colonies that constitute the CFA franc-zone. The
CFA franc – where CFA stands for ‘Financial Cooperation in Central Africa’ or ‘African Financial
Community’ – was established in 1945 as legal tender in 14 African countries. Since then, the CFA Franc
has been firmly anchored to the French currency (the franc then and the euro now). The book calls into
question the facade of international solidarity raised by Paris’ political establishment and mainstream eco-
nomics to legitimise the monetary union, by asserting that ‘the CFA franc, a creature of the French
Ministry of Finance, was actually designed to allow France to regain control of its colonies’. (p. 13) The
CFA not only acts as an invisible barrier to private sector competitiveness, industrialisation, and develop-
ment of its African members, but it is also ‘the main weapon at France’s disposal to guarantee the con-
tinuity of the Francafrique, this system of domination that (…) allows France to continue to extract
significant resources from the African continent’ (p. 86).
The first two chapters introduce the reader to the CFA system’s origins, evolution, and functioning by
explicitly accounting for the asymmetric structures of power in place between the French metropole and
the African members of this currency union. Further into the manuscript, the authors detail historical evi-
dence of political relations between French and African leaders that may raise an eyebrow or two. For
instance, Chapter 3 sheds new light on anti-imperialist movements in francophone Central Africa, its
exponents, and the systematic repression to silence them and preserve the CFA system. Analogously,
Chapter 4 reports on how France has imposed its rule on the CFA system throughout this time, including
the controversial devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994 and the advent of the euro. In the following chap-
ters, the book provides technical instructions that enable any interested reader to assess the purely eco-
nomic dimension of the currency union: a compelling task, given civil society members ‘have mostly been
kept in dark about them, on the pretext that that they would not be able to understand them’ (p. 19). The
last chapter envisages two currency arrangements that could be adopted as viable alternatives to the
CFA franc.
According to neoclassical economics, monetary policy has a neutral effect on the economic potential of
a country. Thus, a stable currency, even if governed by a foreign central bank, is assumed to be sufficient
to support finance-led growth. At the same time, dependency theory has typically associated neo-colonial
governance with trade and capital liberalisation, privatisations, the operations of transnational corpora-
tions, and structural adjustment programmes while it has virtually neglected currency policy as a means of
domination (Amin, 1976; Koddenbrock & Sylla, 2019). However, since Strange (1971) encompassed the
CFA franc in her definition of a colonial or ‘master’ currency, several political economists from several
heterodox traditions have scrutinised the operation of the franc zone and demonstrated its neo-colonial
architecture, and coercive and exploitative nature (Martin, 1986; Pouemi, 1980; Taylor, 2019).
Africa’s Last Colonial Currency adds to this strand of critical scholarship by combining new historical
and economic evidence in support of this claim. The authors, Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla,
respectively, a French journalist and a Senegalese economist, artfully invert the traditional doctrine on the
growth-enhancing effects of importing financial credibility through a fixed peg. First, they demonstrate
that the CFA franc, albeit strong and stable, does not attract foreign capital that is conducive to growth
in domestic productive forces. Second, the strict reserve requirements imposed by Paris to defend the
exchange rate parity inhibit domestic credit that could have serviced productive investment, especially con-
sidering the CFA zone members are savings-constrained economies. In fact, the banking system is
868 The Journal of Development Studies
designed to allocate a limited volume of available funding to the production of raw materials and imports
of consumer goods, for and from the metropole, to the detriment of local development projects.
Although the manuscript does not aim to discuss theoretical approaches, the core theses rest on the
post-Keynesian monetary theory of production and the endogenous theory of money. These tenets were
borrowed by Pouemi (1980) to frame his critique of the CFA franc as an instrument of colonial accumula-
tion and monetary repression. In strengthening Pouemi’s pioneering idea that economic liberation in the
CFA zone fundamentally depends on monetary sovereignty, the authors also note that ‘abolishing the
CFA system risks having limited utility if it does not break the extroverted development model’ (p. 139),
which encompasses unequal trade arrangements and preferential access to French companies. Instead, an
autonomous monetary policy must be viewed as the cornerstone to endorse a model of inclusive and sus-
tainable growth that challenges the neoliberal dogmas dictated by global powers. Interestingly, this para-
digm appears to diverge from settler-colonial systems where foreign authorities coercively control a
thicker institutional network with the purpose of demolishing and replacing, rather than merely exploiting,
the native economy. In such instances, of which Palestine is the most blatant example, an independent
national currency cannot suffice to subvert the entire process of dispossession.
While the book’s inquiry on the CFA system as a predatory tool is extensive and multifaceted, it is not
explicitly embedded into the wider discourse on capitalist accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2004).
However, theorising colonial capitalism through the CFA experience would require clarifying two further
points. One is a systemic view of the currency union that emphasises its role in fuelling structural distor-
tions, and vice versa. The other missing element is an analytical approach of the role of particular trans-
national interests: the proactive support of Françafrique elites to the prevailing status quo is
barely mentioned.
Overall, the product that results from the Pigeaud-Sylla collaboration is a well-documented story, which
may appeal to both a non-specialist audience and social scientists. This inquiry seems particularly useful
in making sense of the reform announced in 2019. The latter, which is intended to address some of the
CFA franc’s most controversial aspects (the reserve requirements and the representation of France in the
central banks of the franc zone), preserves the bulk of its colonial legacy, as explained in the book’s
Postface. Africa’s Last Colonial Currency would be an empowering read for both the citizens of France,
‘who reap the benefits of the system’ (p. 2) and are thus invited to rethink and redefine their role within
the global order, and the African people, in their effort to withstand Western dominance and build a truly
global order with their own acts of agency. The book unequivocally aims to open democratic debate and
inspire long-overdue change.
Serena Merrino # 2021
University College London, London, UK
[email protected]
https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2021.1994234
References
Amin, S. (1976). Unequal development: An essay on the social formations of peripheral capitalism. (Brian Pierce,
trans.). New York: Monthly Review Press.
Harvey, D. (2004). The ‘new’ Imperialism: Accumulation by dispossession. Socialist Register, 40, 63–87.
Koddenbrock, K., & Sylla, N. S. (2019). Towards a political economy of monetary dependency: The case of the CFA
franc in West Africa. MaxPo Discussion Paper 19/2. Paris: Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with
Instability in Market Societies.
Martin, G. (1986). The franc zone, underdevelopment and dependency in francophone Africa. Third World
Quarterly, 8(1), 205–235.
Pigeaud, F., & Sylla, N. S. (2020). Africa’s last colonial currency: The CFA Franc Story. (Thomas Faz, trans.).
London: Pluto Press.
Pouemi, J. T. (1980). Monnaie, servitude et liberté: La répression monétaire de l’Afrique. Paris: Menaibuc.
Strange, S. (1971). The politics of international currencies. World Politics, 23(2), 215–231.
Taylor, I. (2019). France à fric: The CFA zone in Africa and neocolonialism. Third World Quarterly, 40(6),
1064–1088.
