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A relic of France’s African economic empire, the CFA zone must cope with the impact of Western Europe’s monetary disarray

The continuing crisis of the rich world’s financial system has thrown off balance the main surviving element of France’s African empire, the franc of the Communauté financière d’Afrique. Both are better known as the CFA. This monetary arrangement sees 15 mostly small and very poor countries use the CFA franc as their currency. The central pillar of the system is that the exchange rate of the CFA is fixed to the euro, the currency of 16 of the 27 European Union countries....

(This article contains approximately 1470 words)

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Keywords:

United States, Germany, Greece, Benin, Cameroon, Olivier Vallée, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Congo- Kinshasa, Nigeria, South Africa, Abdoulaye Wade, Togolese, Kako Nubukpo, Vietnamese, Central African Republic, Christine Lagarde, Luxembourg, Monaco, Switzerland, Chinese, Nicolas Sarkozy, Communauté financière d’Afrique, Banque de France, Le prix de l’argent CFA, Banque centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, Communauté économique et monétaire d’Afrique centrale, Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine