Monetary coloniality and the stalled development in the West and central African franc zone.

Most African countries adopted national currencies after they gained independence such that colonial currency areas gradually disintegrated. These were the case, for instance, with the sterling area, the escudo zone, the peseta zone and the Belgian monetary zone. The franc zone however was the exception to the rule. Created at the end of the Second World War, it regrouped the territories of the French colonial empire located in many places of the globe which maintained privileged commercial links with the metropolis and whose currencies were attached to the French currency – the franc. Today, “African countries of the franc zone” comprise . . .