After failing to stem the Algerian independence movement, which led to the demise of the Fourth Republic in 1958, the new president, Charles de Gaulle, immediately offered the colonial elites in their colonies a 'loaded' independence deal, which would continue to tie the new nations to France. The elites saw their own interests more aligned with France than the fortunes of their people. This was at a time when France was undergoing reconstruction after its economy had been devastated in World War II and it needed the resource wealth in its colonies. Its currency was weak and so it had to work out a way to continue extracting that wealth on favourable terms.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 19