What UEMOA is and how it works

The money is older than the union

The treaty behind the West African Economic and Monetary Union was signed at Dakar on 10 January 1994, and the currency it governs was already thirty-two years into circulation under a treaty of its own. The West African Monetary Union was created on 12 May 1962 and came into force on 1 November that year, with the Central Bank of West African States issuing a single franc for the states that signed. What 1994 added was the economic half: a customs union, a common external tariff from 2000, a court, and a procedure for watching member budgets. The monetary half was inherited whole.

Two days after the signing at Dakar the rate moved. On 12 January 1994 the CFA franc was halved against the French franc, from 50 to the franc to 100. The rate it replaced had held since 1948, through the redenomination of the French franc in 1960.

What the guarantee is made of

The French Treasury sets out the franc zone in four principles: an unlimited guarantee of convertibility, fixed parities, free transferability, and the centralisation of foreign exchange reserves. The first three hold. The fourth was a requirement that the central bank keep half of its reserves in an operations account at the French Treasury, and that is the one the reform announced at Abidjan on 21 December 2019 removed. France also left the organs of the bank. The French council of ministers adopted the ratifying bill on 20 May 2020.

The parity itself is arithmetic rather than policy. One hundred CFA francs to the French franc, multiplied by the 6.55957 French francs at which the euro fixed it in 1999, gives 655.957 CFA francs to the euro, and that is where it has stood since.

The renaming has not followed. The announcement of December 2019 said the currency would become the eco, and the notes still read franc CFA. ECOWAS had taken the same name on 29 June 2019 for a currency covering a wider group, and on 4 August 2025 it named 1 July 2027 as the date.

The two members that changed money to join

Mali issued a franc of its own after leaving the monetary union in the 1960s, and returned in 1984 with that franc exchanged at two to one CFA franc. Guinea-Bissau, a Portuguese colony until 1974 and never part of French West Africa, acceded on 2 May 1997 and retired the peso at 65 to one.

Guinea-Bissau is the exception at more points than the money. Portuguese is its official language where French is the administrative language of the rest. It is the only member in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, and the only one in the Alliance of Small Island States. It joined the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie in 1979 all the same, as every other member has.

Where the institutions sit

No member holds them all. The Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors are at Ouagadougou. The Central Bank of West African States is at Dakar, and the West African Development Bank at Lomé. The banking commission and the financial market authority sit at Abidjan, and so does the regional stock exchange, created on 18 December 1996 at Cotonou and trading since 16 September 1998, which keeps a national office in each member state rather than a floor in each capital.

What the union is not

It is not ECOWAS, and the two have stopped covering the same ground. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger gave notice of withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States on 28 January 2024 and left on 29 January 2025. All three remain in the monetary union and on the franc, and their records show it: ECOWAS has gone from their group lists and UEMOA has not. Proposals for a separate Sahel currency have been put forward and none has been adopted.

It is not the whole franc zone either. The Central African Economic and Monetary Community issues a franc of the same name at the same euro parity through a different central bank. They are separate currencies with separate codes, XOF in West Africa and XAF in Central Africa, and a note of one is not a note of the other.

It is not a political union. Each member keeps its own legislature and votes its own budget, and what the union runs over the second is a surveillance procedure.