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Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency - Foreign Affairs - Nairaland

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Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by dre11(m): 8:06am On Dec 28, 2019
Last Saturday, France, through the instrumentality of their most faithful poodle in West Africa, Alasane Ouattara, kidnapped the West African currency that was to be launched next year for the 15 countries in the region. In a press conference in Abidjan, Presidents Macron and Ouattara announced that the 8 West African countries using the CFA Franc currency would adopt the Eco as their new currency next year.

The announcement was done the day ECOWAS was meeting for a final adoption of Eco, also decided for 2020. The French move breaks up the 30-year struggle by ECOWAS to establish a regional currency to promote trade and development. What France has done is that it takes over the responsibility of establishing and even printing the new currency and presents the other countries in the region with a fait accompli.

France is also keeping the new currency attached to the Euro and therefore aligning it with its colonial interest as it has always done with the CFA. This means that the other seven West African countries can only join on conditions established by France. The implication is that Nigeria is essentially kept out of the currency because the country will not accept the conditionalities established by France.

The long delay in establishing the Eco has been caused by the inability of the 15 ECOWAS countries to meet the convergence criteria they set for themselves. These are that the inflation rate of less than 5 percent is maintained. The budget deficit is not more than 3 percent of GDP and that each country has enough foreign reserves to cover at least 3 months of imports.

The problem now is after failing to meet these conditions over the past two decades, the eight countries have now adopted the currency without meeting them. This means economics has been set aside for political reasons. There are three political factors that motivated the French decision to take over the baby ECOWAS has had great difficulty in delivering.

The first reason is that over the past five years, a successful campaign has been on-going castigating the CFA Franc as the instrument through which France maintains total control over the economic affairs of its colonies – the argument being economic decolonization never occurred. The Francophone countries have to keep 50 percent of the foreign reserves permanently with the French treasury and they cannot make international transactions without going through Paris.

There were demonstrations that French board members in the West African (French) Central Bank must be removed, which is the reason that France has finally agreed that it will not have direct representatives in the Eco Central Bank. What France is trying to do now is to argue that the “colonial” CFA Franc established is now dead and the Eco is a new currency that is not French controlled. It’s the biggest lie of the year.

The second political reason is related to recent developments on the war on terror in the Sahel. It will be recalled that on 11 January 2013, French warplanes attacked jihadist convoys that were advancing on Bamako, Mali’s capital. The jihadists were already in control of two thirds of Malian territory having successfully defeated and evicted the Malian army from northern Mali.

Initially, the three jihadist groups involved, namely Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), its offshoot The Movement for the Oneness of Jihad (MUJAO by its French acronym) and Ansar Dine were confident that they would takeover Bamako but the French stopped them. I visited Mali shortly after and France was super popular in Mali and ordinary people were flying the French flags in their houses and cars.

Over the past few years however, France became very unpopular in the Sahel because of widespread belief that they were pretending to fight the jihadists in public but supporting them in secret. People are saying with their vast array of drones, planes and satellite cover, how are convoys of hundreds of terrorists able to drive over hundreds of kilometres and attack soldiers without warning from the French. These attacks have been happening with increasing regularity and devastating effect.

President Macron has been very angry that Sahelians were criticizing his country and ordered the Presidents of the five Sahelian countries to report to Pau in southern France to be told off for not convincing their citizens that France was a good friend. The meeting which was to hold this December has been postponed to January following the killing of 71 soldiers in Niger by the jihadists. France is therefore using the Eco currency launch as a public relations gimmick to rebuild its battered image.

The third political motive for the Eco move is to ensure that Nigeria is permanently kept out of the currency. As Professor Ibrahim Gambari has always said, France has always defined itself as the main power block in Africa and so has always seen Nigeria’s self-definition as an African power as a threat to its interests. It is therefore surprising that Nigeria, which is the main target of this French action has been quiet about what is going on. Meanwhile, the French are trying to woo Ghana to join Eco so as to completely isolate Nigeria. The fact that Nigeria has closed its borders with its three Francophone neighbours also created conditions to push the Francophone countries to join this plot against Nigeria. In this tenth year of the battle against Boko Haram in which France is a major player with troops, planes and drones on the ground, understanding the French role in West Africa is very important and my hope is that we have a strong working group following the issues.

https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/why-france-kidnapped-west-africas-eco-currency.html

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Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Nobody: 8:40am On Dec 28, 2019
Our main problem is perpetual stooge we have subjected ourselves to in the hands of the so-called Great Britain, the world's renown parasite. Since the beginning of the insurgency, France has played major roles in curbing their activities with less efforts from the british people. Some of french doctors ( Doctors without Borders) were abducted and even killed by boko haram. The last time I checked, a British court slammed a huge sum which could deplete our foreign reserves overnight as penalty or damages in the case of P and ID. France would never have allowed this injustice to be done to any of their colonies

I think our leaders, both past and present are selfish. Immediately after independence, we have failed to adopt french as a second official language, sticking only to english. In Europe, hardly would you find a country who doesn't speak English, including france though they have always preferred speaking their language. I was in Germany some years back and there I met a guy at the airport. I asked him for a direction to where I was going as a taxi guy but he pretended as if he didn't understand English. Later he came to meet me and began speaking fluently...and that's the way an average german behaves. They mould not like speaking english but the majority of them understand and speak well.

Being bi-lingual as a nation brings about even and speedy development. If you speak my language, I'd deal with you in all eagerness and fairness...its normal but the reverse is the case with British. They are haters and unwilling to help especially in an area where they feel they can't see anything to eat from. Our politicians loaded their banks with looted money from Nigeria and they're busy doing business with it, which was why OBJ called Cameron the then british PM thief and he looked at baba in the face but couldn't say anything after obj gave reasons for calling him that. Whenever our country makes any move to bring the money back home, they come up with stiff conditions which would cause our country parting away almost half of the money.

I hope the French language learned in most private schools is sustained. We need to break this jinx of one language which is english. Hardly would you visit a francophone country and see learned people who do not understand English and that's where they have an edge overseas over us...in football clubs, in schools, fashion or show biz and wherever they find themselves...they always thrive and adapt easily.
Whereas, their anglophone counterparts would have to enrol in a french school to pick up. Amazingly, french and Spanish are very similar so anybody from a fanconphone country can easily understand Spanish when spoken. It brings about ease of doing business internationally without barriers.

The ECO issue wouldn't have been there in the first place, had our government adopted French language from day one in our public schools as a second official language for the sake of economic integration of our region . This is why I've always faulted the amalgamation of 1914, which we are now finding difficult to repeal even years after it's expiry. All the franco phone countries in west Africa put together, are not up to the Nigerian population but are far better in development than we are as a nation. They are well-organised with less issues of insecurity and corruption. The amalgamation was put there by the British to keep enslaving us. I hope this is repealed someday.

114 Likes 12 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by sammirano: 9:30am On Dec 28, 2019
Booth france and britain are mad. They should just leave us already. Wetin happen?

51 Likes 6 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by profilemessages: 11:17am On Dec 28, 2019
like the guy above rightly said, they are in it for their pockets. all the gold that was mined from south Africa where is it? all the elephant tusk or ivory from cote d ivoire where are they? all the rubber, cocoa, groundnut, oilpalm and so on from old 1970s Nigeria where are they? I heard burnaboy singing about how the royal Niger company now know as Unilever sold Africa. they are all the same both France and Britain, likes of likes, no difference, Benin museum was plundered, they stole the artifacts there, Egyptian mummies were stolen and kept inside the British museum, so nothing concerns them save their own interest, not even apartheid or restructuring or anything, despite being heavily criticized, the British still maintain and have a say in south Africa's governance up till now. they don't like us but anytime we have problems, we run to them. I give kudos to Robert Mugabe, he gave them a run for their money, don't forget after Muammar Gaddafi has died and toppled, up till now their is no peace in Libya, now we have insurgency also in Nigeria.

I watched an episode in the TV series strike back where Conrad Knox was talking about how the British bought the whole Africa. Like the Ghanaians usually say that we are just plenty in Nigeria, plenty for nothing and they are right.

Britain is not even as big as Nigeria, in terms of population or land mass or resources, human or natural, and evrybidy is speaking English, they are ruling the world.

if you want to enslave a man, don't bind him with chains and flog him with leather whip, BRAINWASH HIM!!!

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Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Lovelies1: 2:30pm On Dec 28, 2019
4
Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by jerrybakermillz(m): 2:30pm On Dec 28, 2019
Hmmm...dem din kidnapped am already ?thought this European want the best from us so their true intentions is to see us underdeveloped

1 Like

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by koxi: 2:30pm On Dec 28, 2019
Ayam not understanding

1 Like

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by careytommy37(m): 2:31pm On Dec 28, 2019
Good for us. For an economically un-prosperous region, I have never really seen the benefit of the so called economic community. Perhaps, this move will make Nigeria finally abandon the unrealistic aims and forge better individual pacts with better economies in the continent like Kenya, Angola and Ethiopia.

19 Likes 2 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by careytommy37(m): 2:31pm On Dec 28, 2019
cool
Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by MVLOX(m): 2:31pm On Dec 28, 2019
the return of colonialism...

18 Likes 1 Share

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by helinues: 2:32pm On Dec 28, 2019
The Africa speaking French countries are still living in colonial era

42 Likes 2 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by kong200: 2:33pm On Dec 28, 2019
fairfora:
Our main problem is perpetual stooge we have subjected ourselves to in the hands of the so-called Great Britain, the world's renown parasite. Since the beginning of the insurgency, France has played major roles in curbing their activities with less efforts from the british people. Some of their doctors ( Doctore without Borders) were abducted and even killed by boko haram. The last time I checked, their court slammed a huge sum which could deplete our foreign reserves overnight as penalty or damages in the case of P and ID. France would never have allowed this injustice to be done to any of their colonies

I think our leaders, both past and present are selfish. Immediately after independence, we have failed to adopt french as a second official language, sticking only to english. In Europe, hardly would you find a country who doesn't speak English, including france though they have always preferred speaking their language. I was in Germany some years back and there I met a guy at the airport. I asked him for a direction to where I was going as a taxi guy but he pretended as if he didn't understand English. Later he came to meet me and began speaking fluently...and that's the way an average german behaves. They may not like speaking english but the majority of them understand and speak well.

Being bi-lingual as a nation brings about even and speedy development. If you speak my languages, I'd deal with you in all eagerness and fairness...its normal but the reverse is the case with British. They are haters and unwilling to help especially in an area where they feel they can't see anything to eat. Our politicians loaded their banks with looted money from and they're busy doing business with it. Whenever our country makes any move to bring the money back home, they come up with stiff conditions which would end our country parting away almost half of the money.

I hope the French language learned in most private schools is sustained. We need to break this jinx of one language which is english. Hardly would you visit a francophone country and see learned people who do not understand English and that's where they have an edge overseas over us...in football clubs, in schools, fashion or show biz and wherever they find themselves...they always thrive and adapt easily.
Whereas, their anglophone counterparts would have to enrol in a french school to pick up. Amazingly, french and Spanish are very similar so anybody from a fanconphone country can easily understand Spanish when spoken. It brings about ease of doing business internationally without barriers.

The ECO issue wouldn't have been there in the first place, had our government adopted French a subject from day one in our public schools as a second official language for the sake of economic integration of our region . This is why I've always faulted the amalgamation of 1914, which we are not finding difficult to repeal even years after it's expiry. All the franco phone countries in west Africa put together, ate not up to the Nigerian population but are far better in development than we are as a nation. They are well-organised with less issues of insecurity and corruption. The amalgamation was put there by the British to keep enslaving us. I hope this is repealed someday.


Why would an independent country adopt two foreign languages? That's suicidal, and you wonder why only the black race suffer from identity crises.

88 Likes 10 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by TheFacelessMan: 2:33pm On Dec 28, 2019
angry

I was a mercenary for the French Legion under Charles De Gaulle.

This is my role in the fall of the West African currency...

This is a conspiracy from before the times of Mitterrand and Chirac.

You must keep quiet or your life would be at risk....

10 Likes 2 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by AtikuMeansJobs: 2:33pm On Dec 28, 2019
for a group of people to be United and progress together, there must be a uniting factor which unites them all and which they all put ahead of all their differences for a common good. This is how nations work.
Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Ladycoolbreeze(f): 2:34pm On Dec 28, 2019
Ok next
Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by bluefilm: 2:34pm On Dec 28, 2019
fairfora:
Our main problem is perpetual stooge we have subjected ourselves to in the hands of the so-called Great Britain, the world's renown parasite. Since the beginning of the insurgency, France has played major roles in curbing their activities with less efforts from the british people. Some of their doctors ( Doctore without Borders) were abducted and even killed by boko haram. The last time I checked, their court slammed a huge sum which could deplete our foreign reserves overnight as penalty or damages in the case of P and ID. France would never have allowed this injustice to be done to any of their colonies

I think our leaders, both past and present are selfish. Immediately after independence, we have failed to adopt french as a second official language, sticking only to english. In Europe, hardly would you find a country who doesn't speak English, including france though they have always preferred speaking their language. I was in Germany some years back and there I met a guy at the airport. I asked him for a direction to where I was going as a taxi guy but he pretended as if he didn't understand English. Later he came to meet me and began speaking fluently...and that's the way an average german behaves. They may not like speaking english but the majority of them understand and speak well.

Being bi-lingual as a nation brings about even and speedy development. If you speak my languages, I'd deal with you in all eagerness and fairness...its normal but the reverse is the case with British. They are haters and unwilling to help especially in an area where they feel they can't see anything to eat. Our politicians loaded their banks with looted money from and they're busy doing business with it. Whenever our country makes any move to bring the money back home, they come up with stiff conditions which would end our country parting away almost half of the money.

I hope the French language learned in most private schools is sustained. We need to break this jinx of one language which is english. Hardly would you visit a francophone country and see learned people who do not understand English and that's where they have an edge overseas over us...in football clubs, in schools, fashion or show biz and wherever they find themselves...they always thrive and adapt easily.
Whereas, their anglophone counterparts would have to enrol in a french school to pick up. Amazingly, french and Spanish are very similar so anybody from a fanconphone country can easily understand Spanish when spoken. It brings about ease of doing business internationally without barriers.

The ECO issue wouldn't have been there in the first place, had our government adopted French a subject from day one in our public schools as a second official language for the sake of economic integration of our region . This is why I've always faulted the amalgamation of 1914, which we are not finding difficult to repeal even years after it's expiry. All the franco phone countries in west Africa put together, ate not up to the Nigerian population but are far better in development than we are as a nation. They are well-organised with less issues of insecurity and corruption. The amalgamation was put there by the British to keep enslaving us. I hope this is repealed someday.

Be careful what you wish for.

The France you are hyping here is the same reason why most francophone (west) African countries are still pretty much indebted to France even so many years after they have gained their "independence" from France.

91 Likes 7 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by CotenantNIG: 2:35pm On Dec 28, 2019
Till we free ourselves from european mentality, we wont be free

8 Likes 1 Share

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Babara1994(m): 2:36pm On Dec 28, 2019
Hmm..
Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Lari03r(m): 2:36pm On Dec 28, 2019
This is an interesting explanation. Well, it is up to Nigeria to decide, what it wants to do.

1 Like

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Roon9(m): 2:36pm On Dec 28, 2019
Kidnapped grin

3 Likes

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by JOHNSONSOLAFUNMI(m): 2:36pm On Dec 28, 2019
True talk

France is still practicing her rule by assimilation, their footballers, celebs are Africans but are not allowed to remember their root, they believe Nigeria is a threat to their west Africa domination... well I wasn’t surprised when French soldiers ID card was found in Boko haram camp

They disintegrated west African so much, only 5 countries writing waec, railways link all Europeans country together except Britain, USA, Canada, Mexico has trade agreement, you can’t do anything without your neighboring countries but here in Africa, reverse is the case, AU is just an acronym and nothing else, you know why they can’t mess with China, Chinese has the population, they have their own version of WhatsApp and Instagram, what they don’t want

We have the population too (400 million), a single rail line should link all west African countries together and see how fast we develop, all these are not brain science, Chinese did it, singerporian did it, even UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, we can do it too

I believe there’s no limit to what we can achieve if we are united

Africa unite, one country can’t do this alone

I’ll end this with bob Marley’s song

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds."

61 Likes 11 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Goahead(m): 2:37pm On Dec 28, 2019
Nigeria is bigger than France, we can't allow Macron with his penchant for old pussy to dictate how we manage our economy.

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Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Nobody: 2:37pm On Dec 28, 2019
Nigeria can not adopt ECO as long as France mints and controls the Treasury.

If the Federal Government is Smart, they will allow us to collaborate with China and mint prototypical exacts of the ECO Currency and get into these Francophone slave colonies and exchange them with Euro and bring back Euro to build our country. We need to flood their system with excessive ECO until they get hyper-inflation and increase taxes to mop up excess liquidity while we enjoy.

This is what Iran and China does to countries who think they are smart. grin

61 Likes 5 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Imstrong2(m): 2:37pm On Dec 28, 2019
helinues:
The Africa speaking French countries are still living in colonial era
what of Africans speaking English?

3 Likes 2 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by FutureFocus: 2:37pm On Dec 28, 2019
France has been the one running importation business in disguise all these while, importing cars , rice and other items into Nigeria via Benin Republic , and now that Nigeria has shut the door the French has taken up the fight against Nigeria using west African currency as a tool to control Nigeria economy , to suffocate Naira and get Nigeria to spend the French controlled currency without being part of the deal.
now west African nations can not do international business with Eco without going through French central bank .

42 Likes 4 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by healthserve(m): 2:37pm On Dec 28, 2019
Very good this subject of discussion is coming up again.

5 Likes 1 Share

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by musicwriter(m): 2:38pm On Dec 28, 2019
Yet, most of you yell "conspiracy theory" when told that white people are not done enslaving Africa.

Shouldn't the national will of the Francophone African countries be how to liberate themselves from the grip of France on their CFA? How is it that people who said they're educated can easily switch from one slave system to another?

This's why I've lost respect for anybody on the African continent because I see nobody to respect. There's nobody living and thinking on the African continent at this time.

Can't the ECO be pegged on gold price or the Chinese Yen or even the South African Rand? Why always Europe, the same people known to enslave and exploit us? Europeans would never want development in Africa. The only thing they can do and they've always done is exploit, exploit exploit. This's why they killed Muamah Gadahdfi once he began talking seriously about a continental African currency pegged on gold. It would have definitely given us some financial freedom, so they killed him.

When will people wake up on this continent?

We will continue to be enslaved until we do one thing. If we ever want to be completely free from white people, we must go back to our native language, use it to acquire knowledge, and believe in our God. This's the only way to DISCONNECT ourselves from white people and stop creating perpetual slaves out of ourselves.

Isn't this enough reason for we Africans to come to our senses?

49 Likes 8 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by igbsam(m): 2:38pm On Dec 28, 2019
Wow....the colonial masters at it again. Africa is still a toddler who isn't ready to grow up yet. Olodo Agbaya continent.

8 Likes 3 Shares

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by helinues: 2:39pm On Dec 28, 2019
Imstrong2:
what of Africans speaking English?

We are far ahead of African speaking French though all African countries are still lagging behind

7 Likes

Re: Why France Kidnapped West Africa’s Eco Currency by Sunofgod(m): 2:39pm On Dec 28, 2019
TO HELL WITH IMPERIALISM...

6 Likes 1 Share

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