The African Banking Coup: How the Death of the CFA Franc Buries the Old Order and Ushers in the Era of Cryptocurrency |
The African Banking Coup: How the Death of the CFA Franc Buries the Old Order and Ushers in the Era of Cryptocurrency
For decades, critics of neocolonialism have called the West African CFA franc a “colonial tax.”
But the pendulum has swung the other way. While diplomats argued over a potential single currency for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), reality took a different path. The long-awaited “Eco” project has been frozen indefinitely, and new players have taken its place: crypto enthusiasts, along with Russian and Chinese “currency tigers.” Central Africa has legalized Bitcoin; Mali and Burkina Faso are openly discussing a switch to the ruble or the yuan; Sudan is experimenting with gold tokenization. This is no longer just economics—it’s a tectonic shift in sovereignty.
The Collapse of the Eco Dream
The idea of a single ECOWAS currency called the Eco was discussed for two decades. It was supposed to unite 15 West African countries, create an African equivalent of the euro, and break the dominance of the CFA franc. Grand deadlines—2003, 2009, 2015, 2020, 2027—came and went. Economists have dubbed this “endless convergence syndrome.” Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, kept pulling the blanket its own way; English-speaking members don’t trust a central bank they believe is controlled by French-speakers; and many openly accuse France of quietly torpedoing the initiative to preserve its influence.
By 2024–2025, the project had fractured even further. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, where military juntas have taken power, tore up military agreements with Paris, left ECOWAS, and formed their own Confederation of Sahel States. With this political exit, any realistic hope for a single currency vanished. It is precisely in this vacuum that what can be called the “African banking coup” is beginning to take shape: when old tools fail, unconventional means—cryptocurrencies and direct currency swaps with geopolitical rivals of the West—take the stage.
The Central African Republic’s Bitcoin Leap
In 2022, the Western world greeted with mockery the news that the Central African Republic (CAR) had adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. The skepticism was understandable: CAR is one of the poorest countries in the world, where only one in seven people has access to electricity. However, by 2025–2026, this move no longer looks like madness. The CAR has launched the “Sango” project and passed a law allowing the........