Monetary Independence in Africa: The Announced End of the CFA Franc?

Samir Haddad — Alger, Algérie — 2026-08-12

The debate over the CFA franc has left the circles of experts and entered Africa's public space. The 2019 reform, the promises of the eco, successive retreats: the chronology illustrates how difficult it is to break with monetary arrangements inherited from the colonial period.

Algeria, which chose a sovereign national currency as early as 1962, offers a textbook case — with its successes and its errors. The dinar has weathered oil shocks and structural adjustments; it proves that an African currency can exist without external tutelage.

The question is not technical but political: who decides monetary policy, and in whose interest? As long as that question receives no sovereign answer, the CFA franc's much-vaunted stability will remain the stability of a status quo from which the peoples are not the beneficiaries.