“A promise is a debt,” as the saying goes. We would add: except perhaps in politics. Here, in this instance “promises are only binding for those who believe in them“, a tautology popularized by former French president Jacques Chirac.
One of the electoral commitments of the Senegalese head of state, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, and of his Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, was to bury the CFA franc, a vestige of this odious colonization. The Senegalese executive no longer talks about it. It is more like “it is urgent to wait”…
Why? Because as early as March 2024, before the Faye-Sonko victory, the exercise of power has its traps, its surprises – mostly bad – the reality on the ground and the numbers that have nothing to do with the visions and the ardor of electoral campaigns. Because divorcing from France’s heritage is much easier to decree than to do. Because in practice, whatever is said, the CFA franc, pegged to the euro, provides stability and economic solidity to the UEMOA.
The 2009 promise has not been kept 16 years later
There has been talk of the successor to the CFA franc, the Eco, since 2009. Those who had put it on the table met again in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on February 17, 2026, to dust off the project. Officially the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) remains on course: the future common currency will be established in 2027. But in practice the member countries will go in a dispersed fashion; it stalls at the UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) …
