The Bank of West Africa monopolized issuing, commercial, and investment banking

Evidence

The Bank of Senegal was dissolved in 1901. It was immediately replaced by the Bank of West Africa (Banque d’Afrique Occidentale, BAO), based in Paris. With a law of 1901, this new financial institution obtained the privilege of issuing francs, under the supervision of the Bank of France: from that moment on, it was tasked with the issuance of the coins and banknotes used in the African part of the empire. The BAO thus became ‘the only credit institution to simultaneously play the role of issuing bank, commercial bank and investment bank’. It operated exclusively at the service of French metropolitan interests and in particular of the French import–export companies to which it devoted most of its resources, at the expense of their African rivals. — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 60