Economic Community of West African States’s plan to have a single currency remains a mirage 34 years after the idea was floated.
The West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) was set in 2000 to work towards creating a single currency for the region, but there has been no way forward for the 15 member nations of the ECOWAS.
Speaking on the seeming still-birth of the currency, Liberian Senator and Co-chair f the ECOWAS joint committees on Social Affairs and Trade Customs and Free Movement Edwin Melvin Snowe Jr. said the ECO failure to take off was due to politically differences of member nations.
“The single currency is a work in progress. It has its own political implications.
“There has been a lot of political situations that has to be addressed,” said Senator Snowe Jr.
‘It’s not that we don’t have good economists or analysts who can understand and implement it.
“We have had little or less problems from the English-speaking zone but because we have the French CFA with the reserve in France and then you have the BCEAO bank as another federal bank for the French-speaking country, we have to integrate the currency.
“So, it still needs a lot of political will and that is why the last three countries that had coup d’état are talking about changing their currencies because their reserve is in France and not in West Africa or Africa.”
He said the regional bloc is now proposing a single currency for the Anglophone countries and another one for the Francophone countries in the region as a replacement for ECO.
“That is why sometimes we propose that Nigeria, which is the hub of our region, in addition to Ghana, Liberia, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, that is the five English-speaking countries, could have one currency for now.
“Then, the Francophone countries could have another currency. Then you can ask Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde to join either the Francophone or Anglophone so that we have two currencies for now.
“And then, over the years, those two currencies can migrate into a single currency” the lawmaker said.
He said political instability in the region had halted the consideration of the proposals of two currencies for the region but assured that focus would be shifted back to the issue as soon as possible.
“We have been more concerned with putting the region back together, resolving the security situation in the region and then we can put back the single currency issue on the front burner,” he said.
