At the end of the summit, the heads of state declared, in a statement prepared by Paris, that they had come to the conclusion that a 'readjustment of the current monetary parity' with the euro was not necessary. Thus they implied that the risk of a devaluation had effectively existed, although this was not the case. The idea of a monetary adjustment had actually been spread by Paris only to make the 'IMF pill' more digestible for the African heads of state and public opinion. In their final statement, the leaders stated that they had decided 'to start and conclude bilateral negotiations with the IMF in the near future'. The photo taken at the end of the summit is worth a thousand words: in it, you can clearly see the six heads of state physically placed between Michel Sapin and Christine Lagarde.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 238