West African Economic and Monetary Union

Every member of the union: Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The notes and coins are issued by the Central Bank of West African States at Dakar under the code XOF. A franc of the same name circulates in Central Africa under the code XAF, issued by a different bank at the same euro parity, and the two are not the same currency.

Because membership turns on the treaty and the currency rather than on which power administered the place. Guinea-Bissau was Portuguese until 1974 and was never part of French West Africa. It acceded on 2 May 1997 and withdrew the Guinea-Bissau peso at 65 to one CFA franc. Portuguese remains its official language, and it is the only member that also belongs to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.

Yes. The three gave notice of withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States on 28 January 2024 and left on 29 January 2025, and none of them has withdrawn from the monetary union. Their country records here carry the change: UEMOA is still on each of their group lists and ECOWAS is not. Proposals for a separate Sahel currency have been put forward and none has been adopted.

Not here. The reform announced at Abidjan on 21 December 2019 ended the requirement to keep half of the central bank's reserves at the French Treasury and took France out of the bank's organs, and the renaming was the part that did not follow. ECOWAS took the name eco on 29 June 2019 for a currency covering a wider group, and on 4 August 2025 it set 1 July 2027 as the date.

An economic union on top of a monetary one founded in 1962. It brought a customs union and a common external tariff, a court and a court of auditors at Ouagadougou, and a surveillance procedure over member budgets, and the regional stock exchange at Abidjan followed in 1998. The franc, the central bank at Dakar and the fixed parity were inherited from the earlier treaty rather than created by this one.