The African franc is a currency imposed by France in the 1940s and 1950s on 14 African countries that were its colonies. With the end of World War II, the Bretton Woods Conference was held in 1944.
It represented the first building block for the new global monetary system, and through its outcomes, it established the foreign exchange system. The CFA franc is one of the oldest currencies in the world. Despite this, it ranks among the weakest according to the development, economic and social indicators of the countries that trade it.