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[0]: https://medium.com/@evantaxi/6-years-ago-today-the-us-helped...
[1]: https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/africa/CFA-franc-Franc...
As your own source notes, France does not control the policy of either of the two separate CFA franc zones, but does have preferential access to resources resulting from the deal setting up the currency arrangement, which is the actual benefit it gets from the deal.
The two CFA franc zones have zone central banks (which aren't exclusively controlled by countries in the respective zone, since France has a seat on each), it's not individual national central banks issuing currency or managing the peg.
Like Zimbabwe did.
>Food production halved in the 1990s as a result of [Mugabe's] decision to strip white farmers of their land and hand it to members of the black population who, in many cases, had no farming experience.
before the inflation kicked off. https://news.sky.com/story/how-zimbabwes-economy-has-collaps...
Same brilliant policy in Venezuela pretty much.
Ghadaffi wanted to trade oil for Euros and we all know how it end up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/20/nicolas-sarkoz...
Instead of converting from Krone to Euros and vice versa, you convert into the largest, most stable, most liquid currency on the planet. What is insane?
>Ghadaffi wanted to trade oil for Euros and we all know how it end up.
Ah yes, Ghadaffi, Sadam Hussein...good men overthrown because they wanted to "trade oil for Euros".
Wait; why couldn't they again? What, precisely was stopping them from dealing in Euro, besides the seller or buyer of oil demanding to be use USD? Right, nothing.
The idea that the US forces people to trade in USD as opposed to it working out that way because it's a stable currency of a powerful nation is a fallacy that won't die. Just like within the country, you are free to trade in whatever the hell currency you want...if you can find a willing counter-party.
Due to getting hanged, shot, or stabbed, probably.
I've always felt that was the real reason the he was ousted. Other national leaders, both in and outside Africa, have done far worse than him yet have never been invaded.
For european corporations and shareholders, that is. It would probably be better for the majority of people, because higher stabilityand prosperity in Africa will result in fewer refugees, which results in fewer issues with rightwing nutjobs.
Thats not how political dynasties work.
Newer history of Africa is almost exclusively defined by consequences of external manipulation, driven by financial interests.
In general, you can look up the definition of "neocolonialism".
It was the Arab Spring and internal strife which kicked off Ghadaffi's downfall with the events at Benghazi getting the international community - lead by France, ISTR involved.
The UN kicked Libya off the Human Rights Commission, following a report by Amnesty documenting warcrimes on the government and rebel sides and it all degenerated into a nasty civil war. I don't think it is correct to say that he was "ousted" by Western forces in any particularly meaningful way.
>I would say it is not only a moral obligation that the better-off countries have to tackle poverty in our world when we still have over a billion people living on less than a dollar a day, but it's also in our interests that we build a more prosperous world.
There was a lot of brouhaha in the mass media about "liberating" them, then nothing.
Instead of waging War, international negotiation for the succession of power with guarantees of safety should have been performed painstakingly - with lots of carrots offered, but there are just too many warmongers in the US and even the UN.
Most are about the migrant crisis, but the rest are about the ongoing war.
Not every violent conflict has to be the fault of the US and the UN, and the argument they ought to have intervened more to stabilise the country afterwards is at least as plausible as the argument that they intervened too much. (The conspiracy theory that Western intervention had something to do with Gadaffi's gold dinar idea doesn't have much to rest on either. Round about the time Gadaffi was talking up one of the oldest ideas in Islam as part of his vision for Africa and not getting anywhere even when he was the African Union president, a Malaysian state actually introduced one and was roundly ignored, even by the Malaysian government.)
This is just my personal opinion - but military intervention should be only used for self-defence and the defence of one's allies. And for nothing else.
In a democracy we as the electorate like to pretend we have no involvement in this decision making, yet we pride ourselves on the system of government that apparently represents 'the people' the most. "Don't blame us, it's just our government!"
Oh well, that's alright then. Does Mussolini get a pass because he made trains run on time?
Albeit long before being removed from power.
The other point is that the people desperate to emigrate are non-Libyan Africans using Libya as a port of departure. These people have suffered rape, mutilation etc at the hands of the various warring factions.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
Ignoring Libya is more of a regional thing as well. Being seen as part of the middle east / North African mess which the whole American public got their fill of for two decades.
If there was still airstrikes happening in Ukraine it’d certainly get more coverage than Libya.
This lead to the start of the second Libyan civil war. The newly elected House of Representatives, (from now on, "Tobruk government") wanted to take power, but the parties that lost the elections refused to yield it, passing a measure that granted them temporary special authority, and formed the "National Salvation Government". The various Islamist groups in the country declared that neither government represented them, and took the black flag as many different factions, most important of them being "The Libyan provinces of ISIL" and "The Shura council of Benghazi revolutionaries".
The war from then on had many twists and turns, with the UK, US, France, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Jordan, Belarus, Italy, Germany, EU, Qatar and Iran supporting a faction or another at any time. The only really consistent part of this was that the western powers were stumbling over each other to bomb ISIL and other Islamists.
The end result was that a shrewd Libyan-American warlord named Khalifa Haftar (his tagline being that he fought with and against every major faction at some point or another) essentially took over the Libyan National Army (LNA) and the Tobruk Government (they still exist and maintain all the trappings and procedures of democracy, but do so in a building where the security is provided by Haftar, and would never go against his will), and conquered most of the country, including most of the economically significant oil and water resources.
Haftars winning strategy was largely realizing that the western powers would support anyone fighting Islamists, so instead of directly challenging his main opponents, he cleared out all the Islamists he found and took their territory. He might have "encouraged" areas that would not otherwise have flown the blag flag to do so, before crushing them.
He had a lot of western support on the way, but his policy of not taking Islamists prisoner and just having them summarily executed seems to have cooled those ties. Since 2016, he's been courting for Russian support, and seems to have gained it.
If you asked this question in early April, I'd have said that it seems like Haftar will be the next Gaddafi, as his forces were finally moving on the capital and the remaining territory not held by him, but this offensive seems to have failed because of strong Turkish support. LNA withdrew for a time, and Haftar ordered LNA to target any Turkish ships, companies and arrest Turkish nationals found in the country. It seems like he's building up for attempt two.
Also, Haftar is 75 years old, and no-one has any clue what would happen to his forces if he died.
The west still controls the most powerful entities in Africa and also the Chinese are pushing forward with their "belt and road" strategy.
>> Participation in the currency is voluntary.
>> In 2018, Guinea was the largest country of origin [for European migration], followed by Morocco - both former French colonies that don't use the CFA franc. Cote d'Ivoire and Mali are the only countries of origin using the CFA franc that have contributed significantly to migration across the Mediterranean, accounting for 14.4 percent of the total last year.
The data in the article runs counter to the complaint against CFA currency, that it causes poverty and therefore migration into Europe. Two of the highest migration sources were ex-CFA members who now use their own currency and only 14.4% came from CFA members. Ending CFA is not some panacea.
But that said I very much favour local control of currencies in almost every case as it's one of the great benefits of global capitalism being (voluntarily) given away by these countries. Currencies and market value should be tied closely to local market conditions rather than orchestrated and centrally balanced across a massive network of countries with stark economic differences.
Trade deals (plus reducing protectionism and corporate welfare in general) are sufficient to lower barriers to entry into markets which is where it pays off to be liberal and global. Giving up control of your currency should be at most a temporary measure when local state bodies aren't stable enough to have a healthy market. Not some long term arrangement. Inefficiencies of currency conversion are problems that can be solved by healthy financial markets (futures) and technology.
Plus there are better examples of bigger economies having a strong monetary influence over smaller countries governments without the whole colonial image that putting a European bureaucrats directly on central banks gives off. The best example is governments taking on massive amounts of foreign loans - which is still in de jour for some reason. For ex: China controls significant amounts of debt across Africa and Latin America which is arguably a stronger lever of influence than France has in Africa.
They can be withdrawn whenever the country leaves the CFA franc. But in the recent past, countries have been more eager to join than to leave.
Hmm. That’s a strange form of colonialism
I'm not competent to judge whether the CFA Franc is a good currency or not for the countries using it. No doubt it is a compromise with good sides and bad sides. The obvious good side being that it certainly makes trade easier within the CFA Franc zone. The obvious bad side is that the Euro top priority being fighting inflation, it can hinder exportations from countries that are not very competitive. A complaint often heard about the Euro from European countries (especially France, sweet irony).
Hopefully African nations will manage to create their very own currency, and will manage it well.
You're assuming the main cause of migration is poverty, that people from poorer countries emigrate more, and that since emigration is lower the countries are less poor.
The former might be justified, but the two latter arguments are definitely false[0], in fact 'richer poorer' countries have larger emigration!
"Just the opposite: Those richer countries have three times the average emigration rate of the poorer countries.... Somewhere roughly around $7,000–$10,000 per capita, there is a turning point: Emigration from the average country starts to fall with greater economic development, as we might expect. Today’s poor countries are generations away from that level."
So the data cited does not contradict the CFA criticism that it causes countries to be more poor than they otherwise would be. Another criticism might wonder what 'voluntary' means with such power differential and historical relations.
[0] https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2016/10/31/dev...
Still the 'poverty leads to migration' theory is not quite true (in fact arguably the reverse in these particular circumstances), and therefore the fact some CFA countries have less emigration than some ex-CFA countries does not show that they are less poor or that the CFA is beneficial compared to non-CFA case.
Firstly even to migrate you have to have access to information and brain cycles to process it. Real poor are too busy to have that kind of time at hand.
Secondly even illegal immigration requires spending some money upfront and of course poor don't have it.
If you in the middle income range, it does make sense to move up the ladder by immigrating to a better place. If you are super rich, you can just buy citizenship.
Nothing is fair in life it seems.