The BCEAO is active in developing financial inclusion policy and is a member of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion.[2]
History
Building at 29, rue du Colisée in Paris, head office of BCEAO from the early 1960s to relocation to Dakar in 1978
In 1955, the French government transferred the note-issuance privilege for its West African colonies, hitherto held by the Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale, to a newly created entity based in Paris,[3] the Institut d’Emission de l’Afrique Occidentale Française et du Togo (lit.'Note-Issuing Institute of French West Africa and Togo'). In 1959, the institution's name was changed to BCEAO.[4][5][6]
The treaty establishing the West African Monetary Union (French: Union Monétaire Ouest-Africaine, UMOA) was signed on 12 May 1962 and gave BCEAO the exclusive right to issue currency as the common central bank for the, then, seven member countries:[5][7][8]Ivory Coast, Dahomey (later renamed Benin), Haute-Volta (later renamed Burkina Faso), Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. The statutes of the bank were subsequently approved in November 1962 and remained essentially unchanged until 1974, providing for dominant French influence over the BCEAO's governance.[3]
On June 30, 1962, Mali left the group and adopted the Malian franc as national currency. On December 17, 1963, Togo officially joined the UMOA. On May 30, 1973, Mauritania withdrew and adopted the ouguiya as national currency. On February 17, 1984, Mali re-joined the UMOA.[5] Guinea-Bissau joined the group in 1997.
In 1975, the BCEAO was led for the first time by an African Governor, Ivorian Abdoulaye Fadiga. It remained headquartered in Paris until mid-1978, when its head office was relocated to Dakar. The Dakar headquarters was formally inaugurated on 26 May 1979.[9]
The BCEAO's statutes were amended in 2010 to grant it greater independence from member states.[10]: 6
In 2012, the West African Monetary Union's Council of Ministers authorized the BCEAO to create a regional agency to support the issuance and management of their public securities (French: titres). The agency was formally created on 15 March 2013 under the name UMOA-Titres. Since then, UMOA-Titres has coordinated most of the member states' government debt issuance.[12]
The BCEAO has a main branch, known as agency, in the largest city of each of the member states, whose building typically dominates the local skyline.[13] In Dakar, the BCEAO's headquarters is in a high-rise building separate from the agency for Senegal. In addition, the BCEAO has branches in Parakou (Benin), Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso), Abengourou, Bouaké, Daloa, Korhogo, Man and San-Pédro (Côte d'Ivoire), Mopti and Sikasso (Mali), Maradi and Zinder (Niger), Kaolack and Ziguinchor (Senegal), and Kara (Togo).[14] In Paris, the BCEAO maintains a representative office in its former headquarters building at 29, rue du Colisée.
Robert Julienne, a French national, was chief executive (French: directeur général) of the Institut d’émission, then of the BCEAO from 1955 to 1974,[9] after which the bank's head held the title of Governor.
^Mensah, A. (July 1979). "The Process of Monetary Decolonization in Africa"(PDF). Utafiti: Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of Dar Es Salaam. 4 (1): 48–49. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
^ abc"Dates clés" (in French). Central Bank of West African States. Archived from the original on 2012-07-18. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
