Financial Influence in Terms of Currency Production and Management: The Continued Dependency between France and Her Former Colonies

Abstract

Many Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are still having their currency manufactured and mostly managed by France through Bank of France and this is decades after their access to international sovereignty. Using knowledge from the dependency and new world system theories, this study finds that the aim of France, the former colonial power is to keep controlling and influencing financial flows, trades, economic systems which leads to financial dependency in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Through this, African countries have not lost only monetary sovereignty but it has also contributed to intellectual and political dependency of those African countries. This situation is awful for the maintenance of the national independence of these liberated countries from imperialist powers. This article makes some suggestions in order to stop financial dependency in the field of currency transactions and to explore new political attempts to create and manage African countries’ own currency. This study also suggests that literatures should not focus only on technical and economic aspects of currency but go beyond for greater contributions to CFA franc zone studies.