The French state doesn't only benefit financially and economically from the CFA system, but politically as well. The raw materials that it imports at low cost, such as uranium and oil, are what allow it to maintain its status as a 'great power'. In particular, the CFA franc provides Paris with a series of instruments of pressure, repression and control that allow it, if necessary, to go beyond the economic sphere and orient the political trajectory of the 15 African states of the franc zone.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 268