The spirit and purpose of the device on which this colonial creature rests remain the same as when it was created in 1945. Indeed, the CFA franc is much more than just a currency, allowing France to manage its economic, monetary, financial and political relations with some of its former colonies according to a logic functional to its interests. It is the most powerful weapon of the 'Françafrique', this peculiar neocolonial system of domination that the French state established on the eve of the independence of the former colonies, with the precise aim of preserving the advantages of the colonial pact.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 47