Pre-colonial Africa had diverse currencies including an official cowrie exchange rate

Evidence

During the pre-colonial period, different types of currencies circulated on the African continent. Rubber balls, iron and copper bars, shells, zinc fragments, cotton wool, brass wires, glass beads and porcelain grains were just a few of the materials used as means of transaction. Money was certainly a medium of exchange and payment but it was, above all, an institution that helped reconfigure social relations. For this reason, it was entrusted ‘to the elderly, to the village leaders, who were responsible for protecting the binds between the community and its founders’. The cowries, a shell found in the Indian Ocean, called timekla by the Tuareg and oudà in Timbuktu, and particularly widespread among the Yoruba, a people of Nigeria, was long used in West Africa, which in fact was known as the ‘cowrie zone’. It was at the centre of the construction of powerful pan-African trade networks, particularly in the western Volta region, located in present-day Burkina Faso, and in Sudan in present-day Mali. In the first half of the eighteenth century, cowries even had an official exchange rate vis-à-vis the livre tournois, the prevailing unit of account in France from the Middle Ages until 1795, when the franc became the only currency in the country. In 1724, 1,000 cowries were worth 960 deniers tournois, a sub-multiple of the livre tournois. However, like the other African currencies, the cowrie gradually lost its influence. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 53 (#expands, via linked claim)

Modern monetary theory (MMT) shows that a currency is intrinsically related to the way the government is able to shift productive resources from the non-government sector to the public sector in order to fulfil its socioeconomic mandate. In the context of colonial, and then neo-colonial, relations, currency arrangements also served to facilitate the transfer of wealth from colonies to the metropolis. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 20 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Precolonial Africa used diverse currencies where money was above all a social institution — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 53; Currency arrangements can transfer wealth from colonies to metropolis — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 20

Related

• Precolonial Africa used diverse currencies where money was above all a social institution (similarity 0.97)
• The single pegged currency structure drained African resources toward the metropole. (similarity 0.94)
• Currency arrangements can function as wealth-transfer mechanisms between societies. (similarity 0.82)
• Currency arrangements can transfer wealth from colonies to metropolis (similarity 0.81)
• Controlling currency was essential to the colonial appropriation of African riches (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Precolonial Africa used diverse currencies where money was above all a social institution #expands (0.75) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 53
• Currency arrangements can transfer wealth from colonies to metropolis #expands (0.30) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 20