A Quiet but Decisive Undertaking in Dakar
Meeting at the headquarters of the Central Bank of West African States, governors from the Association of African Central Banks (AACB) approved an accelerated calendar for the African Monetary Institute, now envisaged to assume pre-central-bank functions by early 2027. They also commissioned technical work on a harmonised collateral framework and cross-border payment finality, signalling determination to move beyond symbolic declarations toward operational architecture.
The Dakar communiqué emphasised that macroeconomic convergence is no longer treated as a static checklist but as a dynamic risk-management process requiring quarterly peer review and automatic corrective measures. By adopting the language of conditionality usually associated with multilateral lenders, the governors sought to reassure markets that the eventual single currency will be underpinned by credible rules rather than political aspiration alone.
Macro-financial Pressures Shape the Roadmap
The new resolve emerges amid tightening liquidity in the West African Economic and Monetary Union, where commercial banks have hoarded excess reserves and sovereign yield curves have steepened. At the same time, regional governments have almost doubled their recourse to the securities market since January, reflecting both ambitious spending plans and higher rollover needs. An International Monetary Fund assessment this month warned that without swift fiscal discipline the external position of the union could again fall below adequacy thresholds by 2026.
For the governors, these data points complicate but do not derail integration. The revised timetable explicitly links the sequencing of monetary union to the stabilisation of public-debt trajectories and the gradual normalisation of liquidity conditions. In other words, the single currency project has ceased to be treated as a macroeconomic panacea; it is becoming a dependent variable of fiscal and financial reform.
Geopolitics and the Integration Calculus
Political headwinds are equally salient. The withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from ECOWAS has forced a re-examination of what constitutes “continental” consensus. A contemporary analysis notes that pragmatic cooperation, rather than treaty-based discipline, is now the prevailing currency of regional politics. By anchoring the monetary-union debate in a technocratic forum rather than in contested diplomatic arenas, the Dakar meeting aimed to insulate the project from this volatility.
Yet policy-makers are conscious that legitimacy will ultimately rest on outcomes felt by citizens. The governors therefore tied institutional milestones to deliverables in payment interoperability, remittance costs and trade-settlement efficiency—areas where gradual gains can be demonstrated irrespective of high-level political shifts.
Conditions for Credibility and Next Steps
Three conditions will determine whether the timeline survives scrutiny. First, national fiscal frameworks must align with the draft Convergence Pact’s debt and deficit ceilings; without that discipline, post-union adjustment costs could be prohibitive. Second, statistical capacity and data transparency must be strengthened so that peer surveillance is based on comparable metrics. Third, the governors acknowledged the need for clear communication to temper market expectations and pre-empt speculative flows that could undermine exchange-rate stability during transition.
A task force will report on these prerequisites at the next Bureau session later this year. In parallel, a legal working group will draft statutes for the African Monetary Institute, including safeguards for operational independence modelled on the most stringent existing central-bank charters.
The Dakar meeting therefore marks neither a dramatic leap nor mere symbolism. It represents a calibrated advance that weighs economic realities against the strategic imperative of African monetary sovereignty. Whether the momentum endures will depend less on grand summits than on the quotidian discipline of meeting convergence metrics, managing liquidity prudently and sustaining political consensus across an increasingly heterogeneous continent.
