Freeze France out of ECOWAS economies 

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

August 28, 2020

In December of last year, France and eight members of her former West African colonies commandeered the ECO currency idea and turned it into something it was not meant to be.

For some, this was no big deal.  But it was.  It was a big deal as was the Berlin Conference of 1884, when European powers, including Britain and France, sowed the untenable divisions in Africa.

Just when a common currency, the ECO, could have unified West Africa, there came France, again, ready to disrupt the plan, with an unsettling Berlin-Conference-like move to keep the same advantages and benefits the Berlin enforcement plan brought.

This French move requires an immediate response.  Africa must call for a total boycott of France - all her goods and services - because of this deceitful move.  Sadly, the same must be applied to its West African partners in the ECO deal.

ECOWAS countries had planned for years to use the ECO name as a common currency, an amalgamation of all the myriad currencies of the region to include the CFA, a colonial legacy currency that has been pegged to the French Franc since the end of WWII.

The formation of the CFA franc has since been a boon to the French economy but also a political liability.  It had faced “calls for a fundamental overhaul from African leaders;” a call to which French President Emmanuel Macron had recently agreed.

Instead of doing what the African leaders had expected, Macron managed to come out with a sleight-of-hand arrangement. 

Macron was aided by partners of the old French colonial system.  President Ouattara of the Ivory Coast, and seven others, in one fell swoop, co-opted the common name ECO, which ECOWAS had planned to use for the entire region, as a reformed CFA currency only.

The news release on the issue said:

“The ECO will remain pegged to the euro, but the previous requirement that African nations using the CFA franc deposit 50% of their foreign exchange reserves with the French treasury has been abolished.”

The abolishment of the 50% deposit meant nothing to what was under intent for the entire West African region, except there was a deception in the statement. ECOWAS had originally desired a free-floating currency.  The French-designed ECO was not a free-floating currency, as it would be pegged to the Euro, with a guarantee by France, a similar arrangement as the CFA was under the French Franc.

Not surprisingly, this trick bought immediate approval from the IMF for the new Franc ECO as it would keep the African partners in currency bondage to the Euro.

Georgieva Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of IMF happily said the approval was based on “The announced measures build on WAEMU’s (CFA countries in West Africa) proven track record in the conduct of monetary policy and external reserve management.”

What changed in the arrangement?  Nothing, except the external reserve management mentioned, was the same CFA colonial arrangement.  But the Managing Director of the IMF refused to recognize it as such. 

And nothing was mentioned either in this newsletter to support the original views and intentions of the ECOWAS countries and the reasons for wanting a common currency.  They didn’t ask for their currencies to be made subservient to the European economy nor did they desire the name ECO to be misappropriated.  But the French did.

Here was France; with a 69 million population count in 2019, and a land size of 248,572 sq. miles, wanting to drag the benefits of the overall ECOWAS economy, a population size of about 386.91 million people with a total land area of 1,974,589 sq. miles, into her domain, but the IMF refused to recognize this plan as one of a grand theft.

The shame must not be on IMF alone.  Africa has had the experience of this theft in the Berlin arrangement.  Not a single bullet was fired for the conquest, yet the spoils were again locked in place in distant Europe, thanks to the former French minions in West Africa and the other clueless African leaders in the region.

France, for all her braggadocio and pretense projection of power, has never won a war since her defeat in Haiti in 1804. 

After France’s defeat by Haiti, she still managed to get the latter to pay her some 150 million francs in indemnification for the loss of her slave colony.  It took Haiti almost 125 years to pay off this extortion. 

As one writer said, Haiti “is the only case in world history where the victor of a major war paid the loser reparations.”  No legal or moral basis for the payment.  But the world stood silently aside and allowed poor Haiti to be impoverished by France.

When Guinea Conakry said ‘NO’ in 1958, after decades under France, instead of departing gracefully, President de Gaulle chose to strip the new country of every capacity for administration; just to handicap Guinea’s development growth. 

With French civilian public servants pulled out overnight in Guinea, “infrastructures, schools, hospitals (destroyed) and the new country’s coffers left empty,” it took the generous loan of GBP10 million (British pound) from Nkrumah’s Ghana in 1958 for Guinea to survive. 

No wonder Guinea was not part of the new Franc ECO group.  But French depravity in Rwanda, however, was the saddest of all. 

Though designated as a Belgian trustee territory after WWI, France became the de facto foreign power in Rwanda in 1962.  In 1994, the genocide happened.  And within a matter of 100 days, some 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans were murdered.

France did nothing for Rwanda.  Asked about the genocide during a France-Africa summit in Biarritz, in 1994, Mitterrand the then-French president feigned ignorance when it was already known that the Hutus were killing mostly Tutsi. 

"What genocide are you talking about, Sir, that of the Hutus against the Tutsi or the Tutsis against Hutus?" He said.

France could have shaped a speedy UN response. Instead, it produced a misguided view of genocide for this world body. 

In reality, said Guillaume Ancel, a French army veteran, who served in Rwanda during the period of the genocide and author of "Rwanda, la fin du silence," wrote, “France portrayed its military operation as a humanitarian mission to hide its support of the genocidaires.”

France’s interest in Africa hinges on its hunger for power and influence.  And no other prominent French leader knew more than Francois Mitterrand.  He was to state that "Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century.”

Hijacking a brand name like ECO is a master strategy for domination of the currencies and economies of these poor, clueless former French colonies.  It is also a clear indication that France would not allow any of her former colonies, supposedly now independent, to override its interest to still dominate the region.

This ECO was the same as the extortion of indemnities from Haiti in 1804 and is what has kept this country in dependency status to this day. 

By hijacking the name ECO France placed a stranglehold on part of the West African economy that the West African countries would find hard to break.  In addition, the preemptive move by France makes it harder for all the countries in the region to rally to find a new common currency.

How France was allowed in this business of negotiating for a common West African currency must remain a troubling concern.  In the end, it emerged as the winner by harnessing the ECO to the EURO.  This is as good a bet as when the ECO was hooked to the French Franc.  

Not only did France win in the naming game.  By high jacking the ECO name, France has essentially split ECOWAS into two camps; former British colonies on one side and the French on the other. 

This move should have been expected.  But it is still shocking to think how ECOWAS could have allowed itself to be caught so flatfooted in dealing with a duplicitous nation like France.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, publisher, www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, August 28, 2020

Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted on a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at all.