Fighting monetary colonialism in francophone Africa: Samir Amin’s contribution

ABSTRACT

This article discusses Samir Amin’s intellectual and activist contribution to the political economy of decolonisation in sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on his fight from 1969 to 1975 for the monetary sovereignty of West African countries using the CFA franc, a colonial currency that survived independence. Amin was an advisor to Niger’s President Hamani Diori alongside whom he fought to end monetary colonialism. As an alternative to the CFA franc, Amin recommended an ambitious economic integration for the West Africa region based on mutually supportive national currencies. Although his proposal would meet opposition from France, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, his economic case against the CFA franc is still relevant. With regard to the ongoing protests against the CFA franc, it is important to recall a major teaching from Amin: although monetary autonomy is necessary for economic development in peripheral countries, without a delinking strategy its effects will be limited.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article traite de la contribution intellectuelle et militante de Samir Amin à l’économie politique de la décolonisation en Afrique subsaharienne, notamment son combat entre 1969 et 1975 pour la souveraineté monétaire des pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest utilisant le franc CFA, une monnaie coloniale ayant survécu aux indépendances. Amin était un conseiller du président nigérien Hamani Diori avec qui il avait lutté pour mettre fin au colonialisme monétaire. Comme alternative au franc CFA, Amin recommandait une intégration économique ambitieuse pour toute l’Afrique de l’Ouest basée sur des monnaies nationales solidaires. Malgré l’opposition de la France, du Sénégal et de la Côte d’Ivoire à sa proposition, son argumentaire économique contre le franc CFA demeure pertinent. Au regard des contestations actuelles contre le franc CFA, il est important de rappeler un enseignement majeur d’Amin : si l’autonomie monétaire est nécessaire au développement économique des pays périphériques, ses effets seront limités sans une stratégie de déconnexion.

KEYWORDS:

• Colonialism
• CFA franc
• monetary union
• Samir Amin

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Colonialisme
• franc CFA
• union monétaire
• Samir Amin

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Fanny Pigeaud, Kai Koddenbrock, Ingrid Kvangraven, Bernard Founou and Lily Bayoumi, Samir Amin’s long-term and faithful secretary, for their intellectual support and collaboration in writing this text. Comments from anonymous reviewers have also been very helpful. A special thank you to Clare Smedley for having helped improve this manuscript. All errors remain mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This section draws on Pigeaud and Sylla (2021), Chapters 1 to 3.

2 On the concept of economic surplus, see Baran (1957), Baran and Sweezy (1966) and Foster (2014).

3 In 2016 Amin shared an unedited PDF file by email with his contacts (including the author of this article). It was written entirely in French, and entitled ‘La question du franc CFA’ (‘The issue of the CFA franc’). This file brings together some of the texts he wrote in the 1970s on the reform of the franc zone: ‘Note on the reform of the franc zone system for African countries’, dated March 1972; ‘Money and development in the West African Monetary Union’, dated December 1972; and a short report entitled ‘Monetary obstacles to the expansion of intra-African trade and to development in Africa’, which was presented at the meeting of the group of experts in charge of the preparatory studies for the African Ministerial Conference in May 1973 in Abidjan. The introduction to this file quotes some passages from his memoirs (Amin 2015, 352–353). The PDF file is referenced in this article as Amin (2016).

4 The most notable episode happened in Lomé in 23 November 1972 during a visit by the French president Georges Pompidou. Gnassingbé Eyadema, his loyal Togolese counterpart, criticised the parity of the CFA franc in front of his guest:

We believe that this […] parity, which is currently equal to two old francs for a CFA franc, does not correspond to reality. It is a question of justice, and we hope that an exhaustive study, based on objective criteria, will make it possible to set a new parity as soon as possible, more favourable to our peoples.

Pompidou counter-attacked by saying that the independence and sovereignty of countries using the CFA franc ‘have their limits in the guarantee offered by the French state’, since, without such guarantee, the CFA franc ‘would collapse tomorrow’ (Pigeaud and Sylla 2021, 53–54).

5 The text ‘Money and development in the West African Monetary Union’, dated December 1972, essentially incorporates the same reform proposals. The idea of a continental African payments union proposed by Professor Robert Triffin (Economic Commission for Africa 1964) was also suggested by Amin for West Africa.

6 In order to legally implement these reforms, the WAMU member countries adopted a new monetary union treaty and new statutes for the BCEAO on 14 November 1973. On 4 December they signed a monetary cooperation agreement and an operations account agreement with France (Pigeaud and Sylla 2021, 58–59).

7 The Senegalese president Abdou Diouf and his Gabonese counterpart Omar Bongo were strongly opposed to devaluation of the CFA franc. For Omar Bongo, such a measure has no genuine benefit for oil-exporting countries such as Gabon, in contrast to agricultural exporters like Côte d’Ivoire (Pigeaud and Sylla 2021, 69–70). Diouf observed in his memoirs that in the end he personally had to convince Omar Bongo to accept the devaluation (Diouf 2014, 311).

8 Author’s audio interview with Samir Amin, 22 February 2018, Dakar.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ndongo Samba Sylla

Ndongo Samba Sylla is a researcher at the West Africa office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Dakar, Senegal. He co-authored, with Fanny Pigeaud, Africa’s last colonial currency: the CFA franc story (Pluto Press, 2021).