Building Free African Futures (Prof Mammo Muchie)

By Prof Mammo Muchie

Prof Mammo Muchie

Projecting a future can provide agency to realise what is selected to be addressed or do the exact opposite. Instead of projecting a future, what may be more sensible is to create a future by making it change both the makers as well as the destination.

In this OAU/AU@50 Jubilee, the question of whether Africans know where they have been, where they are now and where they are able to go is critical to reflect upon and to chart a future that will close all varieties of coloniality for good and open a free, prosperous, spiritual, humane and free and independent future. Africa’s new relationship with the rest of the world will be born when Africans learn to neutralise the harm that the unholy trinity of loans, aid and debt has done to them. How can Africa construct a future by creating a Pan-African monetary union to forge an integrated relationship with each other in order to relate with the rest of the world on equitable, fair and just principles and values and not through dependence and subordination as it is broadly understood to be now? Africa’s new relationship with the rest of the world will be born when Africans learn to neutralise the harm that the unholy trinity of loans, aid and debt has done to them. One key initiative African leaders can take collectively is to establish a dual currency system that can largely self-finance an integrated African development. The currency for the domestic economy should be an inconvertible people’s money. The existing state currencies that are not exchanged directly with each other, and whose exchange rate is mediated with the dollar, the franc and the Euro, should give way to direct exchanges based on a fair settlement of the appropriate par value. Naturally, diversities, inequalities, different levels of development, differing attitudes and interests present problems in constructing a workable unified currency system. It is precisely to deal with these varied problems that Africa needs a currency system to create liquidity. The direct exchange of local currencies promotes the exchange of private labour across Africa. The exchange of the local to local currency via a global currency continues to fragment Africa and integrate discrete interests and regions with the world economy. The key is to find strategies for Africa to integrate with a world economy as a whole and not in parts. The domestication of the foreign orientation of the existing national currencies is necessary to make Africa re- link with the world economy on its own terms and not terms dictated by others. Monetary union is a key strategy to bring about a new relationship. Its proper construction requires bountiful political will that we cannot take for granted exist given the ties and propensity of the existing states not to pursue real collective action that matters. Differences in economic size and significance of the existing 54 states cannot be shunned aside. In principle, large and small economies can enter into a unified system without loss. As long as a situation of ‘being better off for some without being worse off for all’ exists for all those embarking on currency union, negotiations for a peaceful and evolutionary monetary system can proceed. At all costs states should not demand parity between large economies and small economies. The objective is in the end to evolve into a unified market, unified currency area and unified economic zone. However, the move must be sensible and realistic and various domestic constituencies and their external supporters within the existing states have to be brought along by initiating a programme of fair, gradual and transparent African-wide currency or monetary union. If the cost and benefits for the various sections of social groups can be fairly worked out, possibilities exist even to neutralise transnational, supranational actors, who will no doubt be worked up by the suggestion for an African monetary union.