It all began in the early 1980s with rising global interest rates, falling commodity prices and the resulting international debt crisis. The countries of the franc zone, which until then had seemed to be in good economic health, were severely affected. The zone's heavyweights, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast, quickly entered a downward spiral. The response of the IMF, which had already provided loans to various countries without being repaid, was to demand a 'real adjustment', meaning a compression of internal demand through a reduction in public spending and imports, in order to bring the public accounts and trade balance back into equilibrium. It also suggested combining this real adjustment with a 'monetary adjustment': a devaluation of the CFA francs.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 205