The reason for this concealment is easy to understand: the mechanism underlying the CFA franc is simply devious. … In the past, French colonial propaganda presented the 'motherland' as a benign force that protected Africans. Thanks to France, it was said that the continent was progressing towards prosperity and wellbeing. In 1950, the 5,000-franc banknote used in the colonial empire depicted Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, reassuringly embracing two African figures. The aims of the CFA franc were, in fact, quite different: guaranteeing France's economic control of the colonies and facilitating their wealth's drainage towards the then economically fragile metropole.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 44