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Africa InsidersWest

Insiders Insight: The decoloniser nobody was waiting for

By Africa Insiders
January 30, 2019
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Italy Africa. Credit: vic xia

Italy Africa. Credit: vic xia

African Arguments is and always will be freely-accessible to everyone.

But we also have a separate spin-off product called the Insiders Newsletter. It consists of weekly emails with additional snappy insights on topics such as elections, conflict, health and more. It’s for those who want a bit extra and comes with a small subscription fee: $10/month ($15 if you want to be a generous “supporter”) or $100/year ($150 for supporters).

The income from the Insiders Newsletter goes towards keeping African Arguments, and all its free content, going.

Each week, we publish the table of contents and a free segment from the Insiders Newsletter on African Arguments:

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Table of contents:

  • The follow-up [where we give quick updates on issues previously covered]
    • Operation “prop up Al Bashir”Sudan protests continue
    • Who’s in control in Zimbabwe?
  • What everyone is talking about [examining a headline development]
    • The decoloniser nobody waited for
  • What we are talking about [examining an under-covered but crucial issue]
    • Turning social media back ‘on’ in Chad
  • Conflict Focus
    • Central African Republic[the latest on a major conflict]
  • Health Corner [highlighting an important health or nutrition development]
    • Ebola breakthrough in West Africa
  • Report of the week [new research that caught our eye]
    • New migration routes? New European efforts to block them
  • What else? [the best articles from elsewhere]

Free segment: What everyone is talking about

The decoloniser nobody was waiting for

The essentials: Italy’s deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio has attacked the French government for, in his words, causing migration by exploiting former colonies through the continued use of the French-guaranteed and -managed currency the CFA-Franc.

The context: 14 African countries use the CFA-Franc as legal tender and the arrangement is indeed controversial. While the Euro-pegged CFA allows cheap imports and keeps inflation low, it limits individual countries’ ability to use monetary policy to improve international competitiveness and economic growth. The tradeoffs are a debate worth having, but Italy’s perspective is more or less complete bullshit.

CFA-using countries are responsible for only a fraction of migrants crossing the Mediterranean sea. Meanwhile, membership in the CFA-club is voluntary and countries have both left and joined the arrangement in the past. Italy is clearly only deploying the CFA-debate in the context of the political conflict between its populist government and its French government, making no attempt to include African voices in the discourse.

The good: Albeit for the wrong reasons, the sudden prominence of the CFA-debate may be a more robust discourse about the utility of the arrangement for the countries concerned.

The bad: More likely, attention will fade without any real progress. This will be actively encouraged, among others, by African elites who derive considerable political and economic advantages from a rock solid currency that enables cheap imports and uncomplicated access to the Eurozone.

The future: Sooner or later, the CFA will have to change. Not only because it is a remnant of a colonial past and thus reflects some of the exploitative hallmarks of that era. But also because the difference between African economies is not adequately reflected in the CFA’s institutional arrangement. The Central African Republic and Côte d’Ivoire, for instance, have little in common economically and probably don’t benefit from sharing the same currency.

  • Italy’s Di Maio repeats attack on French policies in Africa (Reuters)
  • Recommended: African migration: Is the CFA franc forcing people to leave? (BBC)
  • For a critical perspective: It’s time to end the CFA franc (Africa is a Country)
  • « La zone Franc et le Franc CFA méritent un sérieux dépoussiérage » (Le Monde)
  • L’Afrique francophone piégée par sa monnaie unique (Le Monde diplomatique)

Discuss with @PeterDoerrie on Twitter

Click here to SUBSCRIBE.

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The Africa Insiders Newsletter is a weekly newsletter brought to you by African Arguments. Written by leading journalists and analysts, it it made up of snappy, insightful updates on the major developments that have hit the week's headlines, and those that should've.

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