In line with the arguments put forward by Samir Amin and Joseph Tchundjang Pouemi in the 1970s and 1980s, the criticisms of contemporary African economists are mostly technical in nature: the currency of the franc zone is not managed in such a way as to help the cause of development (let alone a self-centred development). These intellectuals criticise the lack of monetary autonomy of the central banks, which are thus forced to pursue a particularly restrictive monetary policy, and challenge the monetary status quo based on a heterodox conception of the nature of money – which, as a foundation of social relations, cannot be reduced to a medium of exchange – and of its central role in capitalist economies, which are precisely ‘monetary production economies’. According to this perspective, money, in the sense of creating an additional purchasing power that does not presuppose the existence of prior savings, is a condition of production. Without advances to producers in the form of credit, a growth in production on a permanent basis is inconceivable.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 322