Social networks and protest stunts drove the anti-CFA movement’s visibility

Evidence

Social networks play an important role in the anti-CFA franc mobilisations: they allow for information and opinions to spread rapidly. In May 2018, for example, an image depicting ‘the first ten richest countries in Africa in 2018’ according to the AfDB enjoyed a wide circulation. The text read: ‘No country on this list uses the CFA franc, every country on this list has its own currency.’ Social networks also gave ample visibility to the unusual protest gesture of the Franco-Beninese activist Kemi Seba, the founder of the NGO Urgences Panafricanistes, who, in August 2017, burned a 5,000 CFA franc banknote during a demonstration ‘against the Françafrique’ organised in Dakar. This spectacular stunt, aimed at denouncing a ‘political-economic scandal of the colonial order’, had a strong echo among part of the African youth. The consequences weren’t long in coming: a few days later, Kemi Seba was arrested, based on a complaint filed by the BCEAO for the ‘deliberate destruction of legal tender notes’. He was released after the trial on 29 August, but was expelled shortly thereafter to France, as the Senegalese authorities believed his presence on the Senegalese territory was ‘a serious threat to public order’. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 325

Categorization

• SEED: The AfDB-rich-countries-vs-CFA image is a memorable, concrete data point worth citing in any piece on why CFA members underperform.
• XREF: connects to: The CFA franc functions as a political instrument of pressure over 15 African states.; The CFA franc’s obscurity from public debate was deliberately engineered; Base noise protests are driven by what the noise symbolizes (+3 more)

Related

• The CFA franc’s obscurity from public debate was deliberately engineered (similarity 0.87)
• Base noise protests are driven by what the noise symbolizes (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• A well-funded network of professional Islamophobes drives anti-Muslim activism in America #corroborates (0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 446
• Social movements generate theory rather than merely applying it #corroborates (0.45)