:wonder-who-thats-for:
The West African CFA franc (French: franc CFA; Portuguese: franco CFA or simply franc, ISO 4217 code: XOF) is the currency of eight independent states in West Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. These eight countries had a combined population of 105.7 million people in 2014,[1] and a combined GDP of US$128.6 billion (as of 2018).[2]
There has been some debate over whether the West African CFA franc serves as way for France to keep influence in region, often to the detriment to these nations.[12]For example one of the “rules” of the currency is that the central banks of all of the nations involved have to keep at least 50% of their foreign assets in the French Treasury. Some see this as a way to keep the currency stable while other see it as limiting the economic independence of the West African nations that are involved. Some studies have shown that the CFA franc has reduced intra-regional trade, made countries dependent on exporting a limited number of goods, narrowed the industrial base, and made the economies of these nations very vulnerable to external shocks
Yeah like some sort of pan-African union, they could even use a gold-backed dinar to skirt dollar hegemony, if only we had a leader with the fashion sense to pull it off
I don’t know how reasonable this theory is, but I’ve heard that France was particularly amenable to participating to the NATO action in Libya because Gaddafi was so interested in establishing a new gold backed currency specifically for African countries.
That’s a line I hear a lot. Sort of the gold bug equivalent to the Hillary Death List.
Countries that want to escape the Petro-Dollar routinely have bad relations with the US. But wanting to get off USD (and escape the impact of a western sanctions regime) tends to be more a symptom of failed diplomatic relations than a cause of it.
How many African countries are forced to trade in Rubles?
Only one country has land in all four hemispheres and it isn’t russia
