Bokassa feigned a currency break to extract extra French development aid.

Evidence

In February 1968, he explained the reasons behind his proposal to create a Union of Central African States (Union des États d’Afrique centrale, UEAC) together with Chad and Congo-Kinshasa: he said that this proposal arose from an awareness of the fact that the Customs and Economic Union of Central Africa (UDEAC), established in 1964, and the African and Malagasy Common Organisation (Organisation commune africaine et malgache, OCAM), created in July 1966, were in fact controlled by foreigners. The true independence of a state materialises in a national currency, further noted Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who wanted the UEAC to equip itself with its own currency. But this Union, which came into being in April 1968, did not last long. The Central African Republic abandoned it in 1971 and its president announced that he wanted to ‘mint his own currency, which would no longer be tied to the French franc and would no longer be managed by the BEAC’. ‘Every sovereign state has the right to mint its own currency’, Jean-Bedel Bokassa told his compatriots on 22 September 1971, on the occasion of the launching of a smear campaign against France. In truth, he had no such project: he was simply using the monetary question to negotiate with the French. Aware of the importance they attached to the CFA franc, Bokassa exploited the issue in the hope of obtaining extra development aid from Paris. It worked: as the political scientist Didier Bigo explains, the French government caved in because ‘it considered Bokassa’s rapprochement with some countries too dangerous, and agreed to increase the cooperation funds on condition that Bokassa renounced his new contacts (Romania, the USSR, Libya)’. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 176 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Threatening to leave the franc zone could extract French aid; Bokassa weaponized the currency question to extract aid from France, which capitulated. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 176

Related

• Bokassa weaponized the currency question to extract aid from France, which capitulated. (similarity 0.96)
• Ivory Coast was creating its own currency when France launched its 2011 assault (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Bokassa weaponized the currency question to extract aid from France, which capitulated. #corroborates (0.85) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 176