While confirming France's sovereignty over the currency of the franc zone (Édouard Balladur even went as far as saying: 'La dévaluation, c'est moi'),37 the devaluation also revealed the true nature of the French 'guarantee of unlimited convertibility'. France activated the latter in the 1980s, as the operations accounts of the BEAC and BCEAO turned negative for the first time38 – since independence, the two central banks had always covered their monetary issuance with their own reserves, often beyond the levels required by the monetary agreements with France. To enable it to cope with the crisis, the French Treasury loaned an average of 32 billion CFA francs a year to the BCEAO between 1980 and 1990.39 However, while the overdraft offered by the French government to the central banks allowed them to regulate their payments with the rest of the world, it also gave rise to a very damaging phenomenon for the economies of the franc zone: capital flight. Initially caused by the economic crisis, these outflows of money were greatly facilitated by the functioning of the franc zone and precisely by the free movement of capital. So much so that in a short time they reached very worrying proportions. At least 450 billion CFA francs were repatriated from the franc zone in 1988 and 300 billion in 1989,40 huge sums, which were totally disproportionate to the overdraft 'offered' by France. It was precisely these capital outflows that reduced the central banks' foreign exchange reserves and sent their operations accounts in a debit position. By adopting measures to limit the free movement of capital, the BEAC and the BCEAO would probably have succeeded in greatly limiting the damage. Instead, the French guarantee allowed the continuation of the financial drain that eventually led to the devaluation.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 218