Paris (AFP)
A "servitude": this is how the Togolese economist Kako Nubukpo describes the CFA franc in an interview with AFP, on the occasion of the publication of a book against the African economic elites and international financial institutions.
"The CFA franc poses a political problem and sovereignty," says the author of "The African emergency", published this autumn at Editions Odile Jacob, in an interview before the traditional meeting of finance ministers of the franc zone Friday in Paris.
Mr. Nubukpo, Dean of the Faculty of Economics of Lomé, does not hesitate to describe this meeting in France and the annual meeting of the IMF, which will take place in Washington in the wake, as "the road of servitude" for African authorities.
"In Paris, we will remind them of the catechism of monetarism and ordo-liberalism In Washington, we will explain to them that their budgets must be balanced", he regrets, convinced that the countries members of the CFA franc suffer "a monetary austerity that adds to the budget".
In his eyes, the franc zone ministers, trained for many of them at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, "are offshore leaders who do not report to their people, but to their original employers ".
"Being a good student of the international financial doxa dominates that of producing public policies for the greatest number of people, which has gradually created two worlds," says Nabukpo, whose speech against African elites displeases his colleagues. opponents.
According to him, even though the CFA franc has stabilized inflation in the 15 countries that have adopted it, it refers to "a scheme of the colony".
"What ignites the African youth and the diaspora is that the foreign exchange reserves are based in the French Treasury, that CFA notes are printed in France or that the acronym CFA refers to colonization," annoys l 'economist.
"The CFA franc is also the all-risk insurance that the French Treasury gives to African dictators in return for their bad governance, without which the Chinese would probably pay more attention" to their investments and the loans they grant. -he adds.
"I think Paris is the cuckold of this story because it guarantees a currency, remunerates foreign exchange reserves and, in the end, is insulted by all the African youth," said the economist, for whom President Emmanuel Macron is aware of this situation.
- A "symbolic" choice -
To remedy this situation, the economist proposes a reform of the CFA franc, which would begin with a "symbolic" choice: the change of name.
He also suggests moving the Treasury's foreign exchange reserves and "putting them to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), as Madagascar has done" or to the European Central Bank (ECB), whose presidency will be assumed from this fall by the French Christine Lagarde who knows the franc area for having directed Bercy (2007-2011), then the IMF.
Finally, he also wants a change in the "exchange rate regime to switch to a currency heir to the CFA rather attached to a basket of currencies and not only the euro."
Thanks to this reform, "the door would be opened so that countries with the same economic profile as those in the franc zone, such as Ghana, Sierra Leone or Liberia could enter this new institutional team," he said. He underlines.
Mr Nubukpo is also pleased with West Africa's plan for a single currency, called the eco, which would spell the end of the CFA franc if it were to emerge.
The fifteen members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) - including Ghana - agreed in late June for the adoption by 2020 of this currency.
But Nubukpo wonders if the countries of the franc zone will accept "a transfer of leadership from Paris to Abuja", the capital of Nigeria, an economy that would represent "alone" three quarters of the GDP of the ECOWAS.
© 2019 AFP