When the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta crossed into West Africa.

He was stunned.

Ibn Battuta’s own Rihla, dictated around 1355 wrote of:

• Court ceremony:

“When a man wishes to speak to the sultan and the latter commands him to do so, he takes off his clothes and dresses in rags, then he comes and sprinkles dust on his head and on his back, as a sign of humility.” (Rihla, Mali section)

• Justice and order:

“Of all people, the blacks are those who most hate injustice, and their sultan pardons none who is guilty of it.” (Rihla)

• Safety of travel:

“There is complete security in their country. Neither traveller nor dweller in it has anything to fear from thief or usurper.” (Rihla)

• Spirituality:

“Their prayers are constantly performed with great care, and the Friday service is observed.” (Rihla)

This was Mansa Musa’s court, he was the ruler of Mali.

Ibn Battuta wrote about how Mansa Musa sent generous gifts to Mecca and Cairo. He told of the king’s pilgrimage to Mecca, and how it disrupted gold markets in Egypt for decades after, because he handed out so much of it along the way.

“Thus I reached the city of Mali, the capital…”; “Despite the meanness of Taghaza they deal with qintar upon qintar of gold.” (sourcebooks.fordham.edup)

Battuta saw people using gold dust at markets. He saw people using gold dust for everyday trade. He saw women wearing gold jewellery.

There was no central mint. Weights were measured with scales and handled by trusted merchants. People were trained to spot fraud or diluted dust. Dust gold was stored in leather pouches or small gourds. It circulated regionally across Niger, Ghana, Mali, and down to forest zones (sourcebooks.fordham.edup).

Battuta saw judges, scholars and a royal court that ran on rules. He saw scholars in Timbuktu and merchants in cities with strong walls, court etiquette, and Islamic judges.

He said the people were just. That they hated injustice. That he felt safe.

Mali The Global Node

Mali was a global node. On the hinge between desert and river. North across the sand, caravans carried gold toward Morocco and Egypt. South and west, caravans returned with salt from Taghaza.

The Niger River tied cities together. Timbuktu, Djenné and Gao lived off this traffic (Ibn Battuta’s Mali leg).

Europe heard these stories and drew them. In 1375, a cartographer in Majorca painted Mansa Musa seated with a golden orb on the Catalan Atlas. It is not an African image. It is a European picture of African wealth. It shows how far the news had travelled (Catalan Atlas folio with Mansa Musa).

Inside West Africa, writing and study were local work. In Timbuktu and Djenné, families kept Arabic manuscripts on law, trade, medicine, astronomy, grammar and history. Scribes copied for courts, mosques and scholars.

You can see examples online. The Library of Congress holds a set from Timbuktu’s private libraries with handwriting, notes and legal questions from local scholars (LoC, Islamic Manuscripts).

There are also local histories written in West Africa. The Tarikh al-Sudan was compiled in Timbuktu in the 1600s. It records rulers, scholars, wars and trade from an African point of view. It reads like a ledger of a world that knew its own value (BnF Gallica, Tarikh al-Sudan).

For centuries Africa had rhythm. Gold moved north. Salt moved south. The river carried boats and news. Markets used measured gold dust. Schools and courts worked with written law.

By the late 1400s, control shifted. The Songhai Empire expanded from Gao, taking Timbuktu and key Niger River cities. It absorbed Mali’s networks and continued to develop the administrative systems: provincial governors, tax collectors, Islamic judges, and military garrisons on the river (archive.org).

Songhai taxed caravans, river transport, agricultural surplus, and craft production. Learning and jurisprudence were embedded in statecraft through scholars in Timbuktu and Djenné.

This included:

• Interpreting sharia (Islamic law) in local contexts
• Producing written fatwas (legal opinions) and qadi (judge) rulings
• Regulating contracts, trade disputes, inheritance, marriage, and property rights
• Integrating customary law with Islamic legal principles in mixed communities

Image is from the Tarikh al‑Sudān, the 17th‑century chronicle of the Songhai Empire by Abd al‑Salām Shinqīṭī, preserved in Timbuktu. This is a rare West African-authored manuscript, visually representing the region’s own historical record.

These chronicles record not only rulers and trade, but also the upheavals that followed like the Moroccan invasion that reshaped power along the Niger in 1591.

The 1591 Invasion

The Moroccan army crossed the Sahara and defeated Songhai at Tondibi in 1591. This conquest was militarily enforced, not a collapse of Songhai’s institutions Tarikh al‑Sudan manuscript (Gallica, Eudic Wiki Gateway).

Moroccan garrisons briefly controlled key cities Gao, Timbuktu, Djenné but left rural power structures largely intact.

To the south and west, the Bambara built states based at Ségou and Kaarta. They ran river trade, farming, craft guilds, and local courts.

In the inland delta of the Niger, the Macina state was formed by Fulani reformers in the early 1800s. It set Islamic law in place for courts and governors. Further east, Sokoto grew into a caliphate after 1804, bringing many Hausa cities into one legal and tax framework.

North of the river, the Mossi states in what is now Burkina Faso held their ground for centuries. They traded and negotiated with neighbours. They did not accept outside rule. The chronicles note Mossi diplomacy as routine facts of life for river cities (Tarikh al-Sudan)

East and south, Hausaland and centres like Kong linked savannah and forest. They moved kola, textiles, salt, leather, and gold. These towns handled contracts and credit at the market level. The Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu and Djenné show the kinds of legal questions that came with this trade. There are reflections on partnership, debt, inheritance, and fair pricing (Islamic Manuscripts from Mali).

While Songhai expanded inland, a new dynamic was forming at the Atlantic edge, where Portuguese sailors began probing the coast with charters, raids, and forts.

The Portuguese Arrival

When the Portuguese showed up on the Atlantic coast in the mid-1400s, they were armed sailors backed by the Crown, carrying weapons and royal charters. The goal was gold, ivory, and captives.

The official story was told by Gomes Eanes de Zurara in the Crónica da Guiné (1453). He wrote it under order of Prince Henry. It describes raids down the African coast, the capture of people, and the burning of villages. Zurara frames it as a Christian mission, a noble act. It was propaganda, designed to make violence sound holy and lucrative (Zurara).

The Portugese used a strategy called divide and deal. They did not march inland and conquer in the 1400s. They interfered in coastal politics. They looked for rivalries between African rulers, then sided with one by offering trade goods: horses from North Africa, textiles, beads, and later, yes, firearms.

With one ally secured, they could raid or blockade another.

All of this was wrapped in royal charters from the Portuguese crown. These documents claimed their actions were “legal” under Christian law sold to Europe as ‘discovery’, ‘mission’, ‘crusade’.

By 1482, they built Elmina Castle a stone garrison on the Gold Coast. Its walls and cannons faced inland. For coastal towns, that must have been a strange and hostile sight a fort built not to defend from the sea, but to attack the land behind it. Early European engravings of Elmina show the fortress because control was the message.

African states on the coast had power. They decided whether to allow Portuguese ships to dock, and they could blockade the fort if terms weren’t respected. The Portuguese couldn’t march inland that remained out of reach. But the fort anchored them on the shore, and from there the Atlantic slave trade began to grow.

What began as fortified trading posts soon hardened into prisons. The Atlantic slave trade grew directly out of these coastal stone enclosures.

Atlantic slavery

After Elmina was built in 1482, coastal forts multiplied along West Africa. These were prisons and warehouses for human beings bound for the Atlantic. Their plans and engravings show walls, batteries, and holding spaces.

↑↑ Gorée mapped with its fortifications by Bellin in the mid‑1700s (Bellin, “Plan de l’isle de Goré,”).

Early European narratives describe raids and the export of captives in their own words. Gomes Eanes de Zurara wrote in 1453 to praise Portuguese slaving on the coast. He details captures and justifies them as Christian service (Zurara, Crónica da Guiné).

When describing the 1444 slave raid at Arguin, he tells us about captives divided like spoils of war:

“There you might have seen mothers separated from their children, and children from their mothers, crying out piteously… but the Prince was rejoiced to see the share that fell to him, for he could now send part to be sold.”

p. 75.

Zurara, Crónica da Guiné)

Zurara frames this horror as service to God:

“And because they were thus brought to believe, as was afterwards seen, it is to be reckoned as a thing given by Our Lord God, for their salvation.”

p. 76

Zurara, Crónica da Guiné

By the 1600s and 1700s, printed accounts from traders are explicit about forts, markets, and shipping of enslaved Africans.

Jean Barbot describes the Senegal and “Guinea” coasts, forts, and embarkation practices based on his voyages (Barbot).

Willem Bosman gives a manual‑like report of the Gold, Slave, and Ivory Coasts, including fort layouts, pricing, and trade routines (Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea and 1905 reprint).

The French Role Initally

France first formalised its role in the slave trade with royal charters that bundled the Antilles plantations to coastal “comptoirs” in Africa. The 1664 edict creating the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales granted monopoly rights over French colonies and African posts from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope (France, FranceArchives).

After that company was dissolved, the French Crown issued new letters to the Compagnie du Sénégal. The Crown continued to regulate and extend exclusive rights over the slave trade into the late eighteenth century.

An arrêt of 10 November 1786 granted to the Compagnie du Sénégal the exclusive privilege of the slave trade to a set date, recorded in the colonial archives (ANOM).

Across these sources, the pattern is simple. Coastal European power sat in stone forts, charters, and shipping.

The interior remained African ruled through most of this period. The Atlantic system extracted people and goods from the coast while relying on inland polities for supply and routes.

France Moves Inland

Paris framed its expansion into the African interior as a mission to end the Atlantic slave trade. French politicians and officers called it a “civilising mission” and said they were rescuing Africans from slave raiders. That’s the propaganda that justified marching up the Senegal and Niger.

Columns that marched inland used African forced labour, conscripted under threat of violence. Whole villages were ordered to supply carriers, food, and wood.

Slavery still existed inside the colonies.

In fact, the Code de l’indigénat (from 1887) was a system of colonial law that French authorities used to force Africans into unpaid labour. Refusal could be punished with fines, prison, or corporal penalties. It was not a negotiated legal framework but a tool of domination, written in decrees and enforced at gunpoint.

This meant thousands of Africans were legally forced into building roads, forts, and railways a system that was slavery in all but name.

In the 1890s, during the Voulet–Chanoine mission, French officers openly pillaged and enslaved civilians along their route. Witnesses reported captives marched in chains, treated as spoils of war (recherche-anom.culture.gouv.fr ark:/61561/ly442zu1xwa).

Colonial Economics of the Conquest

Once towns were burned and rulers deposed, the French state built structures to hold people down. They wrote decrees to legalise punishment without trial. They forced taxes to pull men into labour. They handed a monopoly over money to banks in Paris. They tied every African treasury to French accounts.

These are the weapons of colonialism in bureaucratic form (admin violence):

• Law → to codify domination. They invent decrees, gazettes, and the indigénat system to turn military victory into legal authority.
• Taxes → capitation, labour dues, road levies. It’s economics dressed up as administration.
• Banks → they create a bank of issue (Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale). That’s a monopoly, controlled in Paris, that defines what “money” is in the colony.
• Clearing systems → the Zone franc. After WWII, it ties all African currencies to Paris under the Bretton Woods umbrella. Sounds technical, but it’s a lock.
• Propaganda language → they use words like “cooperation,” “civilisation,” “development.” But it’s extractive accounting, just sanitised in public.

Law

France imposed a system called the Code de l’indigénat (the indigénat). French colonial law was a structural excuse for punishment without trial, this system was never designed for justice. French officers could do whatever they wanted, to coorce the population – fine, jail and enslave them. Africans had no appeal. The indigénat was written to make daily violence look and feel to the French themselves, like procedure.

Taxes

France forced every adult man to pay a head tax. This was called the capitation. Rural families who lived by farming or herding had no access to french cash. So to pay, they had to leave home and enter wage slavery. This system was designed to pull people into the colonial economy. If the tax was not paid, men were forced into labour gangs on roads, mines and railways, or into military combat on behalf of the french. Tax has always been a weapon of extraction.

Banks

The Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale (BAO) was established on 25 February 1901 as a reorganisation of the older Banque du Sénégal. The BAO was a private joint-stock bank. It was controlled by the BNP Paribas (then called Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas). This is the same bank as the modern BNP Paribas. They continually rebrand to deflect from that fact, but it is the same bank. So for the purpose of this essay I will refer to it as what it calls itself currently: BNP Paribas.

Quick Facts
Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale (BAO) = BNP Paribas 
Head office today: Paris. 
Colonial branches (still open today): Saint-Louis, Senegal. Later Dakar became the main hub. 
Network: Branches spread across the federation of Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF): Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Niger, Benin, Mauritania.

BNP Paribas was created via French colonial decree to serve colonial needs in French West Africa. It became the offical and sole ‘note-issuing’ bank (private money printers) for French West Africa.

BNP Paribas’s founding shareholders were all French colonial commercial ‘explorers’ (extractors): about 60% of shares were held by Maurel & Prom.

Maurel & Prom

Maurel & Prom are still in business today and they are still actively extracting from Africa. They are now a Paris-listed oil and gas exploration and production company, they are still firmly entrenched in the African extractive economy.

Founded in 1831 as a Bordeaux colonial trading house, Maurel & Prom financed slavery, peanuts, and salt. In 1901, they held about 60% of the shares in the Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale, making them central to controlling West Africa’s colonial currency.

Their strategy is framed under the guise of “development,” but it’s the same logic that exploitive lie as ‘civilising’. They have simply shifted the phrasing.

In the 19th-century it was peanuts, palm oil and human captives,
in the 21st-century it’s oil and gas.

In their Investor Messaging they highlight operational success, improved returns, carbon reduction goals, and sustainability talk. There’s no mention anywhere of the consequences of their operations on West African communities or the historical extraction behind their wealth.

Maurel & Prom were the backbone of the colonial machine. When BNP Paribas was created, they had the controlling share (60%.) That meant one private trading house held the keys to the entire colonial money system. These people were merchants who had got rich from extraction, plantations, and slaving networks, and they converted that into financial power that wealth as power network has compounded over time. Today they still exist. They are perceived as ‘legacy’. They are no relic. Today, now, they trade as an oil company on Euronext Paris, still drilling hydrocarbons in Africa. The same firm that once controlled African treasuries through BAO now drills African soil for profit. That is not past tense. It is the continuity of extraction in the present.

Maurel & Prom: Offices & Operations in West and Central Africa 2025

Head office: 51 rue d’Anjou, 75008 Paris, France. (Maurel & Prom)

Controlling shareholder: PIEP (Pertamina, Indonesia) holds c.71% of capital as of end-2024. See the company’s capital/shareholding and 2024–2025 results pages. (Maurel & Prom)

Operations in Africa (2025)

Gabon

• Core asset: Ezanga onshore oil permit (M&P working interest 80%). Ongoing development; new zones reported in recent filings. Q1-2025 production (M&P share): 15,684 b/d. (Maurel & Prom)
• Gas acreage: Etekamba (EF-9) awarded 2024; contains existing gas discoveries. (Maurel & Prom)
• Operating base: Port-Gentil (OPRAG port zone). Public business directory listings show the local address; the company site does not publish it. (Go Africa Online)

Angola

• Producing interests: Offshore Blocks 3/05 (20%) and 3/05A (26.67%); Q1-2025 M&P share 4,478 b/d. (Maurel & Prom)
• SPA signed 19 June 2025 to acquire an extra 5% in 3/05 and 6.67% in 3/05A (subject to Angolan approvals). Post-close, M&P would hold 25% (3/05) and 33.33% (3/05A).

Nigeria

• Equity holding: 20.46% stake in Seplat Energy (largest shareholder).
• Recent move: Seplat announced completion of ExxonMobil’s MPNU conventional offshore assets acquisition on 12 Dec 2024. (Maurel & Prom)

Tanzania

• Asset: Mnazi Bay gas field. After completing the Wentworth deal, M&P is at 60% working interest; operator.
• Current activity: H1-2025 M&P share 58.7 mmcfd; three-well drilling campaign slated to start Q4-2025 (contracts awarded). (Maurel & Prom)
• Local entity / base: M&P Exploration Production (T) Ltd, Dar es Salaam (company and association listings). (Membership Portal, Dun & Bradstreet)

Outside Africa (for completeness)

• Venezuela: Urdaneta Oeste (40% via M&P Iberoamerica). OFAC licence expired 27 May 2025; activities reduced to safety/maintenance while production continues under partner mechanisms. (Maurel & Prom)
• Colombia: 2025 agreements to take 40% operated in Sinu-9 gas licence (growth option; not West/Central Africa). (Maurel & Prom)

Other shareholders in BNP Paribas included Marseille-based investors like Société Marseillaise de Crédit, also still in business, now named Société Générale. As with BNP Paribas, I will be referring to them by their active name and disregarding the disrespectful propaganda titles. A ‘subsidary’ of SG is still Société Générale. Name the occupier.

Société Général (SG SMC)

Société Générale is a core pillars of French colonial finance. Founded in 1865 in Marseille, they specialised in trade finance for shipping, plantations, and extraction in Africa. In 1901, they were a founding shareholder of the Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale (BAO), the institution that monopolised West Africa’s currency.

The Société Générale;’s first bank founded in Marseille in 1865 – opened branches in French North African territories by 1919. By then Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco were also under French rule.

Although African nations believed they had achieved independence around 1960 the French banks and extraction monopolies (aka the colonisers) never removed.

In 1962 in Côte d’Ivoire, straight after “independence”, SocGen set up another subsidiary rebranded again!

It then ENTERS NEW MARKETS. SocGen pushes further into Senegal and Cameroon in the 1960s (Société Générale).

SocGen then started to absorb other colonial era banks, any French bankers who felt the ethical pressure to leave Africa, Société Générale would buy out.

A striking case is that after over a century of operations (including its colonial forays), SMC was acquired into SocGen’s group via Crédit du Nord in 2010.

In other words, a bank born in colonial Marseille (SMC) ultimately became a node in SocGen’s global empire, directly linking colonial banking heritage to a modern French banking giant. The continuity is unmistakable, what started as colonial finance in the 1800s now lives on as part of one of Europe’s largest banking groups, still profiting from Africa.

Expansion Across Africa: SocGen’s Subsidiaries

By the 2000s and 2010s, Société Générale controlled an extensive network of African subsidiaries. It was present in around 15 countries across West, Central, and North Africa, often operating under the “Société Générale” brand alongside the country name.

This footprint made SocGen “one of the top international banks in Africa,” according to Reuters (reuters)

To pause for a moment on that Reuters framing.

Language like “has agreed to sell” and “in first move by new CEO”. That paints the decision as voluntary, strategic, and modernising. It positions it as the new CEO’s bold first step, not as a concession to decades of PUBLIC PRESSURE! African resistance, sovereignty movements and financial pressure.

The wording does two things:

1. Normalises coercion as choice. “Agreed to sell” implies a willing handover, masking the fact that SocGen only sells when profits shrink, risks rise, or governments push them out. In Cameroon, for example, the state bought back its bank to reclaim sovereignty . That’s not generosity from Paris, it’s forced retreat.
2. PR gloss for leadership. Framing it as “first move by new CEO” recasts retreat as vision. It signals to shareholders that this is a careful repositioning, not failure. It protects stock price and reputation while downplaying the colonial continuity being challenged on the ground.

Reuters is a huge part of the propaganda system. They are not just a media outlet they are a wire service. That means other news outlets copy and align to their stories. Its phrasing is syndicated and repeated by thousands of outlets worldwide without modification. That gives its word choices enormous structural power. If Reuters says “SocGen agreed to sell”, that line gets cloned across Bloomberg terminals, Africanews reports, Yahoo Finance, and local business press. It becomes the “objective” record.

That power makes omissions and euphemisms much more than sloppy language.By masking economic coercion as cooperation, and erasing African resistance, they perpetuate the ideological layer of colonialism.

Back to Société Générale

Société Générale Côte d’Ivoire (SGCI) is the leading bank in Ivory Coast and in francophone West Africa by assets (Société Générale). It holds roughly 20% of all bank loans in Côte d’Ivoire and about 16% of deposits (ecofinagency) giving it a commanding market share.

In Senegal, SocGen’s subsidiary (SGBS) is also the biggest bank. Even in Ghana (a former British colony), SocGen acquired a major bank (SG-SSB) and now operates about 40 branches, making it a notable foreign player in that market.

SocGen’s African subsidiaries are always majority-owned by the French parent. SocGen held 93–95% stakes in its units in Congo-Brazzaville and Mauritania, and around 57–67% in others like Equatorial Guinea and Chad (africanews).

In Cameroon, SocGen owned 58% of Société Générale Cameroun before a recent sale to State of Cameroon on July, 15 2025 (Société Générale). This was a sale, not a gift. Again the language here is “has agreed to sell” another PR veneer.

The financial details remain undisclosed in France. SocGen did not reveal the sale price in its press release or public filings, nor did Reuters or any other outlets. The official message simply states:

• No transaction value was shared.
  “The value of the transaction was not disclosed” is explicitly stated.
  (CameroonOnline.org, MarketScreener, Reuters)
• However, Cameroonian internal documents offer a glimpse: A Finance Ministry letter describes a government valuation ranging between $118 million and $192 million for the 58.08% stake. These are government estimates, not SocGen’s figure.
  (Business in Cameroon)

The State of Cameroon has, in last month since time of publish, been forced to buy back a majority stake in its own banking system from Société Générale for $192 million despite what Société Générale has siphoned profit out of Cameroon for decades.

It’s the continuity of extraction by other means. First military conquest. Then colonial monopolies. Then “independent” French-controlled subsidiaries. Now, when a state asserts sovereignty, it must pay hundreds of millions just to stand on its own soil.

Clearing systems

Context Global Fiscal Colonisation

In July 1944, the United States controlled more than 65% of the world’s gold and 50% of all global industrial output.

America told its citizens it was fighting for freedom and democracy. In reality, Wall Street bankers and corporate boards were fighting for markets, resources, and financial dominance. The myth was liberty; the machinery was colony. Debt, slavery, gold, and control.

The conditions for both world wars were cultivated by financial and industrial interests that Washington was tied into. In the run-up to WWI, Wall Street banks like J.P. Morgan extended massive credit to Britain and France, effectively ensuring that the U.S. was financially invested in one outcome.

From 1914 to 1945, U.S. policy kept Europe fractured and indebted while consolidating the empire’s raw supply chains from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

By 1944, the U.S. dollar was declared equal to gold at $35 per ounce.

United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference UNMFC (Bretton Woods)

From July 1 to July 22, 1944, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference took place at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, with 730 delegates from 44 nations (worldbank.org).

United States Delegation

• Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sitting President of the United States at that time.
  (Roosevelt himself was not there in person, but his Treasury Secretary chaired the meeting and his staff controlled the agenda).
• Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury — President of the conference.
• Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury — chief architect of the IMF.
• Fred M. Vinson, Judge & Vice-Chairman of the U.S. delegation.
• Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State.
• Mabel Newcomer, Economist, Vassar College — the only women delegate* from the U.S.
• Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board
• Edward E. Brown, prominent Chicago banker
• Jesse P. Wolcott, Congressman, Michigan
• Brent Spence, Congressman, Kentucky
• Robert F. Wagner, U.S. Senator
• Charles W. Tobey, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire

*Across the entire conference (~730 delegates), only three women participated. In addition to Newcomer was Katherine White an official delegate attached to Canada’s Department of Finance and Dr. Erika Wiedermann an economist in the Czechoslovak delegation. Erika was only allowed to technical sessions, she was not official delegate.

(Sources for Bretton Woods: centerforfinancialstability.org,
Acheson – I will cover this conference separately for americans)

Two institutions were set up in Washington, D.C. after this summer strategy session:

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF)The IMF was sold to the world as an institution of stability and cooperation. Its structure makes that impossible. From the start, voting power was pegged to financial quotas. That meant the United States, with the most gold and the highest industrial output in 1944, walked away with permanent veto power. Britain, France, and their allies claimed the next highest shares. Everyone else was placed in subordinate positions. This was not cooperation. It was a command structure disguised as multilateralism. Colonies and newly “independent” states signed on under rules they did not write. Borrowing meant submission to conditions written in Washington and Paris. The propaganda word was “stability.” The reality was dependence and discipline.
• The World Bank (IBRD)Voting powers meant the U.S. held a controlling share from the beginning.

CFA Franc: France’s New Colonial Currency, 1945

In 1945, months after Bretton Woods restructured the global monetary order under U.S. and European control, France issued a decree creating a new currency for its African colonies. It was called the CFA franc — le franc des Colonies Françaises d’Afrique. The decree was signed by Charles de Gaulle and published in the Journal Officiel on 26 December 1945. The Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale (BAO) — then controlled by BNP Paribas and its colonial shareholders — was made sole issuer.

France called it monetary cooperation.

But it was a lock.

Behind the new currency lay an institutional structure that tied the treasuries of newly “independent” West African states directly to Paris. At the centre of that structure was a mechanism called the compte d’opérations — the “operations account” — housed at the French Treasury. The setup was simple: West African countries had to deposit their foreign currency reserves into this account, which France controlled. In return, France guaranteed that the CFA franc could always be converted into euros, at a fixed rate.

It sounded technical. It was a colonial holdover, dressed in Bretton Woods language. France claimed it was “guaranteeing stability.” But it was France holding the money. France deciding the rules. France earning interest. And France holding veto power over the economies of West Africa.

Quick Timeline

• 1–22 July 1944 — United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (Bretton Woods, New Hampshire). IMF and World Bank (then called IBRD) designed.
• 24 October 1945 — United Nations Charter entered into force. UN officially established.
• 30 October 1947 — General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) signed in Geneva by 23 countries.
• 26 December 1945 — France created the franc des Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA franc) by decree, pegged to the French franc. BCEAO (still part of the broader BNP Paribas) records the date in its own institutional history: “Le franc CFA est né le 26 décembre 1945… il signifie alors ‘franc des Colonies Françaises d’Afrique’. The name itself locked the currency’s purpose: a colonial franc, created not for Africans but for the colonies of France.

Primary Decree Establishing the CFA Franc

Décret n° 45-0136 du 25 décembre 1945 is the founding legal text for the CFA franc. It was signed by Charles de Gaulle (President of the Provisional Government), René Pleven (Minister of Finance), and Jacques Soustelle (Minister of the Colonies), and published in the Journal Officiel on 26 December 1945. The decree officially created the CFA franc (alongside the CFP franc) as a French colonial currency and fixed its value obligations. The source notes the connection:

“Le décret numéro 45‑0136, signé par le président du gouvernement provisoire […] crée le franc des Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA).”
(tarage.noblogs.org)

This is the direct legal origin.

The BCEAO, the issuing bank for West Africa, reflects the rhetoric:

“Le franc CFA est né le 26 décembre 1945… il signifie alors ‘franc des Colonies Françaises d’Afrique’.”
(Le Monde.fr, bceao.int)

Together, these are the clear legal backbone and institutional architecture for the modern neoliberal fiscal colonisation of West Africa.

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1994 Devaluation and Closure of the French Treasury Account

1994 Devaluation

In the early 1990s, the IMF crushed West African states with debt and structural adjustment programs. The IMF was the gatekeeper of emergency credit. If governments refused its conditions which were truly barbaric; welfare cuts, privatisations, money devaluation, then they were cut off from all international finance.

On 12 January 1994, under pressure from France and the IMF, the 14 African heads of state in the franc zone were gathered in Dakar and forced to devalue the CFA franc by 50%, setting the new parity at 100 CFA = 1 French franc.

The official communiqué recorded:

“Les chefs d’États africains membres de la zone franc … ont décidé… de modifier la parité du franc CFA… à dater du 12 janvier 1994 à 0 heure au taux de 100 francs CFA pour 1 franc français.” (vie-publique.fr, lomegazette.com)

France then issued its own statement, saying it “marked its agreement” and insisted it remained committed to the so-called monetary cooperation but the arrangement meant Paris retained control of African money through new branding as the “guarantee of convertibility”. (vie-publique.fr)

The fallout was brutal. Overnight, prices for imported goods doubled. Salaries and savings, fixed in CFA, collapsed in value. Civil servants, teachers, and small traders saw their incomes halved in purchasing power. Street protests broke out in Mali, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad. Riots in Dakar and Bamako were met with repression. Farmers and labourers (the supposed backbone of “development”) were pushed further into debt as costs for fertiliser, fuel, and manufactured goods soared.

France’s own language about the devaluation “garantir la convertibilité” meant simply that Paris kept the lock on the vault. The African population bore the shock, while French banks and exporters gained a new edge: African raw materials suddenly became 50% cheaper on world markets, priced in a currency pegged to Paris.

This was a raid disguised as monetary policy. Exactly like when they marched up the river. Only now instead of rifles, it was decrees and communiqués. Instead of soldiers, it was bankers and technocrats.

The ethical truth is stark: the IMF demanded social dismantling as the price for access to money, while Western banks and corporations reaped the profits. African states were stripped of the power to govern their own economies. This was not cooperation. It was coercion in its purest form fiscal colonisation through debt. Usury at the scale of nations. Interest was dressed up as “stabilisation.”

Debt repayments to colonised were once again prioritised above african schools, hospitals, and human lives.

Closure of the Compte d’Opérations

Fast forward to 2021, when the BCEAO’s annual accounts show that the long-standing compte d’opérations a special reserve account held at the French Treasury was closed. This change erased the interest revenue that African central banks previously earned from it. An analysis notes:

“Le compte d’opérations… a été clôturé… Pour 2021, ce gain est naturellement de zéro.” (Agence Ecofin)

In practical terms, BCEAO earned 24.1 billion CFA francs in 2020 from that account; by 2021, zero. (Agence Ecofin)

Media analysis highlights the structural impact: African treasuries lost a steady income, with reserves still held in Paris but without compensation. (lomegazette.com)

The Four Pillars of Control

France’s own official documents list four founding principles of the Zone franc system:

1. Unlimited convertibility — France guaranteed the CFA could be turned into francs or euros.
2. Fixed exchange rate — France controlled the peg.
3. Free capital movement — capital could move under French-defined conditions.
4. Reserve centralisation — African foreign reserves stayed in Paris.

These were written in French Treasury documents, signed in bilateral agreements with West African central banks, and defended in every IMF review as “stability policy.” But the mechanism was colonial. France did not need to occupy land with troops when it could control liquidity with accounting. (Trésor Public, Les principes et modalités).

From 1945 until 2020, the BCEAO (West Africa’s central bank) — representing eight nations — held its reserves in this French Treasury account. These weren’t small sums. The CFA zone ran trade surpluses, and the foreign exchange earnings were funnelled back to Paris. Each year, the French Treasury earned oversight, control, and interest from this arrangement. The BCEAO received an interest payment — but only if France decided the conditions were met.

This was not cooperation. It was externalised custody — a post-imperial tool designed to limit real African monetary independence while preserving Paris’s authority in global finance.

The Quiet Closure in 2020–2021

The account stayed in place for 75 years.

Then, in December 2019, France and the UEMOA (West African Monetary Union) signed a new agreement, replacing the 1973 convention that had governed the relationship. France announced that the BCEAO would no longer be required to hold its reserves in the French Treasury. France would still guarantee the euro peg, but without custody of African reserves.

See Trésor Public announcement

By January 2020, France confirmed: the BCEAO’s compte d’opérations had been closed.

This wasn’t reported with headlines. No ceremony. No public broadcast. But the evidence is in the ledgers.

In 2020, the BCEAO still reported 24.1 billion CFA francs in interest earned from the account. By 2021, that line disappeared. The central bank’s audited financial statements for that year show zero income from the operations account.

See BCEAO États financiers 2021 (PDF)

Côte d’Ivoire’s own Treasury confirmed this in a public statement: “Le compte d’opérations a été clôturé… pour 2021, ce gain est naturellement de zéro.”
The Ivorian state had been receiving interest. Now it wasn’t. The account no longer existed.

See Trésor de Côte d’Ivoire official site

Agence Ecofin, a financial analysis outlet, reviewed the same tables. It noted the structural change: reserves were no longer stored in Paris, and income from the French Treasury had stopped. But France still held the monetary guarantee. The leash was longer — but it had not been cut.

See Agence Ecofin report

What Changed — and What Didn’t

What ended was the centralised custody of reserves in Paris. This is meaningful. It removes a direct tool of control. For the first time since independence, West African states through the BCEAO no longer had to deposit their foreign exchange earnings into an account at the French Treasury.

But the fiscal colonisation structures like the euro peg, the convertibility guarantee, and the power of French and European banks in the region remains. The system still operates within the limits defined by the Bretton Woods colonial settlement: French control of West African liquidity dressed in the language of partnership.

Today

• The BCEAO remains in Dakar.
• The CFA has been renamed the “Eco,” but its architecture is largely unchanged.
• BNP Paribas, Société Générale, and French energy firms like Maurel & Prom still operate across the region. The power over value, convertibility, and capital movement is still shaped in Paris.
• The BCEAO is still the institutional framework for money in West Africa. It is still headquartered in Dakar, Senegal.
• The CFA franc system remains intact, though tried more rebranding in 2020 and it’s now called the “ECO”.
• BNP Paribas constantly rebranding through subsidiaries, new commercial banking arms and investment diversifications, continues to operate and exploit via fiscal colonisation across West Africa .

Thomas Sankara’s Words

Thomas Sankara’s strongest, clearest quote on debt and monetary sovereignty is from his 29 July 1987 speech at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Addis Ababa, titled “Un front uni contre la dette”:

“La dette ne peut pas être remboursée. D’abord parce que si nous ne payons pas, nos bailleurs de fonds ne mourront pas. Soyons-en sûrs. Par contre, si nous payons, c’est nous qui allons mourir. Soyons-en sûrs également.”

Translation:

“Debt cannot be repaid. First, because if we don’t pay, our lenders won’t die. That’s certain. But if we do pay, it is we who will die. That too is certain.”

Full transcript (in French): https://www.thomassankara.net/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/La_dette-1.pdf