The CFA franc was initially pegged to the French franc and has been linked to the euro for about two decades.

Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo currently use the currency. All the countries are former French colonies with the exception of Guinea-Bissau.

The announcement was made Saturday during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and France’s former main colony in West Africa.

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, speaking in the country’s economic capital Abidjan, announced “three major changes”.

These included “a change of name” of the currency, he said, adding that the others would be “stopping holding 50 percent of the reserves in the French Treasury” and the “withdrawal of French governance” in any aspect related to the currency.

Macron hailed it as a “historic reform”, adding: “The Eco will see the light of day in 2020.”

The deal took six months in the making, a French source said.

The CFA franc’s value was moored to the euro after its introduction two decades ago, at a fixed rate of 655.96 CFA francs to one euro.

The Bank of France holds half of the currency’s total reserves, but France does not make money on its deposits stewardship, annually paying a ceiling interest rate of 0.75 percent to member states.

The arrangement guarantees unlimited convertibility of CFA francs into euros and facilitates inter-zone transfers.

CFA notes and coins are printed and minted at a Bank of France facility in the southern town of Chamalieres.

The CFA franc, created in 1945, was seen by many as a sign of French interference in its former African colonies even after the countries became independent.

The Economic Community of West African States regional bloc, known as ECOWAS, earlier Saturday urged members to push on with efforts to establish a common currency, optimistically slated to launch next year.

The bloc insists it is aiming to have the Eco in place in 2020, but almost none of the 15 countries in the group currently meet criteria to join.

Stumbling Blocks

ECOWAS “urges member states to continue efforts to meet the convergence criteria”, commission chief Jean-Claude Kassi Brou said after a summit of regional leaders in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

The key demands for entry are to have a deficit of less than 3 percent of gross domestic product, inflation of 10 percent or under and debts worth less than 70 percent of GDP.

Economists say they understand the thinking behind the currency plan but believe it is unrealistic and could even be dangerous for the region’s economies which are dominated by one single country, Nigeria, which accounts for two-thirds of the region’s economic output.

Nigeria’s Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed told AFP “there’s still more work that we need to do individually to meet the convergence criteria”.

ECOWAS was set up in 1975 and comprises Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo — representing a total population of around 385 million.

Eight of them currently use the CFA franc, moored to the single European currency and gathered in an organisation called the West African Monetary Union, or WAMU.

But the seven other ECOWAS countries have their own currencies, none of them freely convertible.

AFP

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Eighty-three others swam to shore and are receiving assistance from Mauritanian authorities, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR.

Survivors told IOM staff in Nouadhibou, the second largest city in northern Mauritania, that at least 150 people including women and children were aboard the vessel, which they said began its journey last Wednesday (27/11) in The Gambia.

They said the vessel was running low on fuel when it approached the northwest African nation.

“The Mauritanian authorities are very efficiently coordinating the response with the agencies currently present in Nouadhibou,” said Laura Lungarotti, IOM Chief of Mission in Mauritania.

“Our common priority is to take care of all those who survived and bring them the support they need.”

The injured have been transferred to the city hospital; IOM is deploying a medical doctor to support the local response. The Mauritanian authorities are coordinating with the Gambian consular services to ensure that the necessary support is provided to the migrants while in Nouadhibou and the Gambian Ambassador will travel to the city.

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This was disclosed when the Technical Mission on UNWTO, led by David McEwen paid the NTDC DG a visit at the Corporation’s headquarters on Monday.

The NTDC boss, Mr. Folorunsho Coker, in his address said interest rate on funds for tourism development and promotion should be a single unit, adding that “said tourism business cannot thrive with double digit interest rate.”

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Coker further reiterated his Road Map for the Nigerian Tourism, a five-point action plan – acronymic CHIEF (Corporate Governance & Regulations, Human Capital Development, Infrastructural Development, Events and Marketing, and Finance & Investment) – to promote and develop the tourism industry by promoting domestic tourism and encouraging ease of doing business in Nigeria.

While describing the cottage industry as the bedrock of tourism development, Coker underscored the importance of corporate governance and regulations reviews, saying: “The new NTDC law has been passed by the Senate, now awaiting concurrence. When finally concurred, it will allow NTDC to treat tourism as business, do joint ventures (Public Private Partnership), while also enabling the Corporation to behave in a manner like the Tourism Board of Kenya, Gambia and any country that depends on tourism, thereby allowing us to generate good revenue for government, and create wealth for the people.

“The corporate governance and regulations that need to be changed are not just at the Federal Government alone. We also need to look at state as well as the local government tourism law, and it must also be passed to the private sector.”

The NTDC boss also emphasized the need for an improved human capital development, which according to him, will speed up the development and promotion of tourism in the country. He added that “human capital development is not limited to the public sector, but it should also be well taken care of in the private sector.

He said the marketing of the tourism events, potentials and assets must be digital.

McEwen, who earlier in his speech commended the efforts of the Coker-led administration at promoting domestic tourism, said the group was ready to collaborate with NTDC on the establishment of tourism statistics and tourism account.

He, however noted that though measuring domestic tourism is quit challenging but his committee would come up with machinery that would ensure a considerably perfect measurement of domestic tourism traffic in the country.

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