Colonial Legacy, Monetary Policy, and Resource Mobilization for Development in Africa

Abstract

This chapter aims to demonstrate how the colonial legacy in general, and in its monetary area in particular, has been one of the major obstacles to African countries' ability to mobilize financial resources for their development. In fact, the monetary systems inherited from colonialism serve as an instrument to plunder African resources and extract surplus for capital accumulation in former colonial powers. One of the best examples is found in the relationships between France and its former colonies in West and Central Africa. The monetary system imposed on those countries is essentially perpetuating the Colonial Pact, under which the role of the colonies is to serve the political, economic, and strategic interests of the colonial power. For African countries, the monetary arrangement, illustrated by the use of CFA franc as their currency, has been a major obstacle to capital accumulation, productive capacity building and effective structural transformation of their economies. Unless African countries break free from the CFA monetary system and reclaim their sovereignty, there will be no development. The struggle for monetary sovereignty in former French colonies is now part of a broader continental struggle to reclaim Africa's sovereignty over its resources and the formulation of its development policies.

Citation

Dembele, D.M. (2023), "Colonial Legacy, Monetary Policy, and Resource Mobilization for Development in Africa", Herrera, R. (Ed.) Value, Money, Profit, and Capital Today (Research in Political Economy, Vol. 39), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 53-71. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-723020230000039004