The African continent, with it's rich resources, possesses tremendous economic potential but unfortunately, remains unconscious about timely development and enforcement of common policies to efficiently utilize it's potential.
Africa boasts a vast market that holds great promise for the future. However, in order to fully capitalize, the continent needs to establish a common currency that can effectively facilitate trade and economic integration.
Currency difficulties are one of the biggest obstacles to intra-African trade. Big contracts are often conducted in US dollars or other non-African hard currencies but there is a lack of these across the continent. At the same time, confidence in many African currencies is weak because of fluctuating exchange rates, including against the dollar.
A single African currency would make the continent more independent. With Trump's recent trade barries and tariffs, the time is 'nigh for the continent to free itself from the 'shackles of the west.
Even if building a new financial architecture is far from a simple task, Trump’s tariff tantrums are an opportunity in disguise: setting in motion a process that has long been discussed but never treated as urgent until now.
Many countries will suffer from the immediate impact of lost dollar revenues, but we should resist the trap of defending a deeply extractive system that has inflicted a crippling combination of high foreign debt, underinvestment and climate calamities upon countries in Africa.
These inequities are underpinned by profoundly hierarchical, neo-colonial financial structures that keep the dollar on top.
