Africa's currency arrangements

Africa has more currencies than countries — most countries have one of their own, but a handful share regional arrangements, and a few do not issue legal tender at all. The configuration matters for reading the data: a country whose currency is pegged to the euro will not show the same kind of nominal-GDP volatility as a country with a freely floating currency, even when their underlying economies are growing at similar rates. This page is the reference for which arrangement applies where.

The four kinds of currency arrangement on the continent

African currency arrangements fall into four broad categories, with edge cases at the boundaries.

1. Shared regional currencies

Two regional groupings share a single currency between multiple countries:

• The West African CFA franc (XOF) is issued by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) for the eight members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA): Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. It is pegged to the euro at a fixed rate.
• The Central African CFA franc (XAF) is issued by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) for the six members of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC): Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. It is also pegged to the euro at the same fixed rate as XOF, though the two are not interchangeable.

Countries inside these zones get exchange-rate stability and very low inflation as a side effect of the euro peg. They give up an independent monetary policy and a freely-adjustable exchange rate. Reform discussions have been ongoing for several years; the eventual replacement of the West African CFA franc with a currency called the eco has been announced multiple times but, at the time of writing, the existing arrangement remains in force.

2. National currencies pegged to a foreign anchor

Several African countries operate their own currency but maintain a formal or de facto peg to another currency:

• Pegs to the South African rand — Eswatini's lilangeni, Lesotho's loti and Namibia's dollar are part of the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and circulate at parity with the rand inside their issuing countries.
• Pegs to the euro — Cape Verde's escudo and São Tomé and Príncipe's dobra both peg to the euro at fixed rates.
• Pegs to the US dollar or to a basket — Djibouti maintains a long-standing peg to the US dollar; several other countries operate managed regimes that tighten and loosen as conditions require.

3. Freely floating or managed-floating national currencies

Most African countries operate a national currency on a floating or managed-floating basis: the central bank may intervene to smooth daily volatility, but the rate against the dollar moves with markets. Examples include the Nigerian naira, the South African rand, the Egyptian pound, the Kenyan shilling, the Ghanaian cedi, the Ethiopian birr, the Tanzanian shilling and the Moroccan dirham. The degree of float varies — some are close to free, others are heavily managed against a target — but the practical consequence is that nominal-USD GDP for these countries can move materially with the exchange rate.

4. Dollarised or partially dollarised economies

A small number of African countries do not effectively issue their own legal tender, or have done so but find it displaced in practice by the US dollar. Zimbabwe is the most prominent example, having moved through several currency regimes — the Zimbabwe dollar, US-dollar circulation, the bond note, the RTGS dollar, the ZWL, and most recently the gold-backed Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG). Several other countries circulate the US dollar alongside a domestic currency for high-value transactions.

What the arrangement means for the data

The exchange-rate regime affects three things you can read on Africa Center country profiles:

• Nominal GDP volatility. Floating-currency economies show larger year-on-year swings in nominal-USD GDP. CFA-franc countries show less volatile nominal GDP because their exchange rate against the dollar moves only with the euro.
• Per-capita rankings. A country whose currency depreciates 30% in a year can fall several places in nominal-USD per-capita rankings without producing fewer goods or services.
• Inflation comparison. CFA-franc countries typically have low inflation imported from the eurozone; floating-currency countries' inflation can be higher and more variable. Nominal-GDP figures embed this difference.

For a longer treatment of these effects, see reading African economic data.

Quick reference: which country uses which currency

The currency for each country is on its country profile, with the ISO 4217 code in parentheses (XOF, XAF, ZAR, etc.). The most common shared arrangements at a glance:

All other African countries operate their own national currency on a managed or floating basis. Countries inside CFA franc and CMA arrangements are particularly identifiable in the data because their nominal-USD GDP series move noticeably less than peers' over time.

How to use this when reading the site

Two simple checks before drawing a conclusion from a year-on-year change in a country's nominal-USD GDP:

• Look at the currency. If it is a euro-pegged CFA franc or a CMA member, an unusual nominal-USD swing is unlikely to come from the exchange rate alone.
• Look at real-GDP growth alongside nominal. Real-GDP growth (in constant local-currency terms) strips out exchange-rate effects and is the better indicator of economic activity.

Where to go next

• For the broader treatment of nominal vs PPP GDP and per-capita figures, see reading African economic data.
• For the institutions that organise the CFA franc zones and the CMA, see the African Union and the RECs.
• For each country's own currency, see the country profiles in the country directory.
• For primary monetary statistics, see data sources.

Last reviewed: 28 April 2026.