For now, this is as close as it gets to a devaluation in Nigeria.

Monetary policy officials unified some of their multiple exchange rates when they let currency dealers quote naira levels used in actual trades this month. They did it to entice back bond investors who fled in 2014 and 2015 as oil prices collapsed and the central bank tightened capital controls.

But not everyone is clear on the changes in the currency market of Africa’s biggest economy, or why they matter.

So, what happened?

Banks had been using a currency window for investors known as Nafex since April, but weren’t allowed to publish their trades. This month, the FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange, a Lagos-based platform that oversees naira transactions, asked banks to start quoting Nafex rates, effectively merging that market with the main interbank one.

The move immediately weakened the naira’s interbank price 14 percent to about 365 per dollar, knocking $6.5 billion off the stock market’s value.

David Cowan, an Africa economist at New York-based Citigroup Inc., the world’s biggest foreign-exchange trader, called it a “devaluation by stealth.”

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