“We propose that Nigeria, along with Ghana, Liberia, Gambia, and Sierra Leone — the five English-speaking countries — could have one currency for now.
“Then, the Francophone countries could have another currency. Over the years, these two currencies could potentially merge into a single currency”.
This was disclosed by Edwin Melvin Snowe Junior, a prominent member of the ECOWAS Parliament and Co-chair of multiple joint committees within the organisation.
However, during an interview with journalists in Banjul, Gambia, Snowe Junior said that political challenges, have now led to indefinite postponement of the single currency, called ECO.
The ECOWAS single currency initiative, first proposed in the late 1990s and gaining momentum in 2000 with the establishment of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), aimed to create a unified currency for the 15-member regional bloc.
Snowe Junior, said that the roadblocks are largely political rather than economic or technical.The single currency is a work in progress. It has its own political implications.
“There have been a lot of political situations that need to be addressed. It’s not that we don’t have competent economists or analysts to implement it”, Snowe Junior explained.
A significant hurdle in achieving a single currency is the need to integrate the French-speaking countries’ use of the CFA franc, which is tied to France with reserves held there, alongside the Anglophone countries.
This complex arrangement requires significant political will and negotiation.
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,” Snowe Junior noted.