Demographic reversal will erode France’s capacity to back the CFA currencies

Evidence

In 1950, with its 41 million inhabitants, the French population was larger than that of the current franc zone, which at the time had 30 million inhabitants. Today the relationship is reversed: the 15 African countries of the franc zone are two and a half times more populous than France (162 million inhabitants against 64 million in 2015). By 2100, they will count 800 million inhabitants against 74 million in France, according to UN projections. The ability of Paris to ‘guarantee’ the African currencies will inevitably be weakened, because the French economy will probably no longer be big enough to lend credibility to such a promise. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 337

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on the political economy of monetary unions and the declining relative weight of former metropoles. — connects to: Demographic reversal will erode France’s capacity to underwrite franc zone currencies; Integration would have demographically swamped metropolitan France; Algerian integration would numerically swamp metropolitan France politically. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 943 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 337

Related

• Demographic reversal will erode France’s capacity to underwrite franc zone currencies (similarity 0.87)
• Integration would have demographically swamped metropolitan France (similarity 0.85)
• Algerian integration would numerically swamp metropolitan France politically. (similarity 0.84)
• Demographic arithmetic made Algerian integration untenable for France by 1958 (similarity 0.83)
• The French guarantee of the CFA franc was illusory since African reserves exceeded debts (similarity 0.81)
• The convertibility guarantee costs France under 1.3 percent of GDP (similarity 0.80)
• The devaluation doubled France’s financial capacity in CFA francs overnight. (similarity 0.80)
• The 1994 devaluation capped decades of Paris refusing to adjust the overvalued CFA franc (similarity 0.80)
• CFA francs are non-convertible among the three African franc-zone sub-units (similarity 0.80)
• The CFA guarantee arrangement secretly benefits France at Africa’s expense (similarity 0.80)
• France’s convertibility guarantee was a fraud that would never actually materialize (similarity 0.80)
• France’s guarantee is backed by pooled African reserves and French central bank seats (similarity 0.79)
• CFA convertibility guarantee is cheap only because African economies stay small. (similarity 0.79)
• The CFA franc was a political choice that deprived non-adapting African actors of credit (similarity 0.79)
• The CFA franc’s parity was set without regard for local economic realities (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Demographic reversal will erode France’s capacity to underwrite franc zone currencies #corroborates (1.00)
• Integration would have demographically swamped metropolitan France #corroborates (0.75)
• Algerian integration would numerically swamp metropolitan France politically. #corroborates (0.75) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 943
• Demographic arithmetic made Algerian integration untenable for France by 1958 #corroborates (0.75)