Transformations institutionnelles et développement économique dans la zone franc en Afrique de l’Ouest (1960–1990)

This article explores the transformations of the franc zone, a system of monetary cooperation between France and francophone Africa issued from the colonial era, from the decolonization to the end of the twentieth century. It seeks to explain the rationales that resulted in the preservation of this system, the most important being the turmoil in the international monetary system in the early 1970s. The transformation of the franc zone that took place in the 1970s was supposed to dedicate the monetary system to the funding of development, which was at the core of the political agenda at the time, as well as to reassign the monetary sovereignty to the African states. But in the 1980s the sovereign debt crisis led to an increasing control of the international institutions in charge of managing this crisis, while France gradually opted out. This evolution shows, in the long run, how the franc zone has become an international cooperation rather than a bilateral cooperation.