With the creation of the franc zone, in 1939, France aimed to transform its colonial empire into a commercial and monetary shield that would protect its economy in a context of international monetary, economic and political crises. This monetary union, which brought together the territories under French administration in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas and the Antilles, was based on a system of exchange rates that allowed France to control the purchase and sale of the various currencies, and therefore to defend the external value of the metropolitan franc against foreign currencies.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 93