With the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) working toward launching a single regional currency by 2027, the quiet, persistent question lingers in policy circles: will other blocs follow, and could these regional steps one day converge into a continental currency? The vision is not fanciful. ECOWAS institutions have been reconfirming 2027 as the working horizon while pushing technical prerequisites through the West African Monetary Institute and finance ministries.
The direction of travel is clear, even if the road remains uneven.
Africa’s monetary ambition predates today’s headlines. The Abuja Treaty of 1991 sketched a long-run journey culminating in an African Economic and Monetary Union, while Agenda 2063 upgrades that map with dated milestones, including an African Central Bank targeted for establishment between 2028 and 2034 following the creation of an African Monetary Institute. In early 2025, the African Union moved to operationalise the African Monetary Institute, underlining seriousness of intent rather than rhetorical flourish. These are not abstract aspirations; they are governance commitments, time-stamped and increasingly backed by institutional work.
READ ALSO: Policy Frameworks Might Help Africa Address Housing Crisis
Trade Before Tender
If currencies are the visible tip of integration, trade is the engine room. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has reduced average tariffs for a wide swathe of products and is busy expanding coverage of rules of origin, an essential lubricant for real commerce rather than ceremonial launches. Officials now report “widespread trading” under AfCFTA, with a growing share of tariff lines eligible for preferences.
Yet Africa still trades much more with the rest of the world than with itself. Intra-African trade accounted for roughly 15 per cent of the continent’s total trade in 2023, a level far below intra-regional trade shares in Europe or Asia. That number is slowly edging up as supply chains thicken under AfCFTA, but it reminds us why payment and currency reforms matter: friction at the border is both a cause and a consequence of limited intra-African commerce.
Whatever name future money takes, its credibility will rest on reliable pipes. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), backed by Afreximbank and the AfCFTA Secretariat, is already cutting settlement times and keeping transactions on the continent. At least US$5 billion in annual savings are projected as participation widens, small in global terms but meaningful in a region where every basis point freed can be recycled into investment.
Regional payment systems are also maturing. Southern Africa’s SADC-RTGS, operated by the South African Reserve Bank, consistently clears cross-border payments in rand with growing volumes and has migrated to ISO 20022 messaging to match global standards. East Africa’s cross-border payment systems are being re-tooled under a new masterplan after officials openly acknowledged low uptake and the need for deeper interoperability. These are the nuts and bolts that make any discussion of common money serious.
Lessons from Europe’s Playbook
No region should copy-paste another’s history, but the euro’s birth offers a practical checklist. Europe used explicit convergence criteria on inflation, fiscal deficits, debt, interest rates and exchange-rate stability to give markets a common yardstick and to discipline political optimism. It also harmonised payment standards through SEPA and, later, ISO 20022 to enable frictionless transfers across borders. The message for Africa is straightforward: macro-convergence plus shared payment standards are complements, not substitutes.
The Sahel’s Signal Flare
The Alliance of Sahel States, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has announced a Confederal Bank for Investment and Development, conceived to finance cross-border public goods and reduce dependency on external financing cycles. While not a currency launch, it is a monetary signal: a region experimenting with pooled financial capacity as a prelude to deeper coordination. It sits alongside wider debates in West and Central Africa about reforming the CFA-franc zone and the long-running ECOWAS Eco project. The Sahel’s move underscores that monetary cooperation can start with development finance and payment infrastructure before any new notes are printed.
The Trade Advantage
The first dividend of monetary convergence in Africa is trade efficiency. Under today’s architecture, many cross-border payments between neighbouring African countries detour through correspondent banks outside the continent, adding time, foreign-exchange spreads and compliance costs. PAPSS and SADC-RTGS are already shortening that distance.
A second dividend is scale. Once a manufacturer can move inputs and finished goods across multiple markets without waiting days for funds to clear, the effective size of the home market increases. That attracts investment into supply chains that would otherwise be sub-scale in any single country.
A third dividend is resilience. Local-currency settlement reduces the share of trade invoiced in third-country currencies, easing pressure on dollar reserves and, over time, helping to smooth exchange-rate pass-through into domestic prices.
What to Expect
The near-term horizon will be regional, not continental. ECOWAS will try to convert technical files into policy reality by 2027, though shocks can shift timetables. The East African Community remains publicly committed to a monetary union and a single currency in the early 2030s, with renewed calls for an East African Monetary Institute to do the heavy lifting.
Meanwhile, the AU’s push to stand up the African Monetary Institute by late 2025 and to progress the African Central Bank by the early-2030s window gives continental direction, even if no single continental currency is imminent. Expect more plumbing than poetry: payment-system upgrades, supervisory harmonisation, and common data standards rather than new banknotes.
Economic context will matter. The African Development Bank projects growth edging back toward nearly 4.1 per cent in 2025 and about 4.4 per cent in 2026, with inflation easing and fiscal repair under way in several economies. The IMF’s most recent Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa speaks to the same stabilisation, even as funding conditions remain tight. A currency project needs that macro floor: credible disinflation, workable fiscal anchors and central-bank independence that investors can test and trust.
Expect, too, the creation of continental safety nets. In 2025, African leaders approved the African Financial Stability Mechanism, to be hosted at the AfDB, designed to offer preventive support and lower debt-service costs for reforming members. If implemented effectively, such a backstop would help anchor expectations during future shocks, a precondition for any serious monetary integration.
The Hard Graft Beneath the Headlines
There are reasons the euro took decades. Monetary unions entrench a “no short cuts” discipline. Africa’s equivalents of the Maastricht criteria already exist in outline via the African Monetary Cooperation Programme: inflation caps, deficit and debt thresholds, and exchange-rate stability indicators that AU and regional central banks are now asked to peer-review annually. The discipline is not punitive; it is protective, ensuring that countries enter any union with compatible macro regimes so that one member’s fiscal troubles do not become a continental bank run.
Payment standardisation is just as important. Africa’s own moves to ISO 20022 in systems like SADC-RTGS are not mere technicalities; they are the grammar of modern money. Data-rich messaging improves compliance screening and settlement speed, while a common standard eases interoperability between domestic instant-payment schemes, regional RTGS platforms and PAPSS.
Financial-sector safeguards must keep pace. Banking unions work when resolution regimes are credible, deposit insurance is well funded, and central banks have unquestioned lender-of-last-resort capacity. Africa’s progress here is uneven, but the direction is good: deeper surveillance by regional committees of central bank governors, more transparent payment statistics, and frank admission by East African officials of what has and has not worked in their systems to date.
Regional First, Continental Later
For the next decade, Africa’s monetary story will be written in regional chapters. West Africa’s Eco project will either establish a working nucleus or, at the very least, codify fiscal and monetary habits that narrow dispersion among members. East Africa’s timetable to the early 2030s gives enough space for institutions to mature. Southern Africa will continue to behave like a de facto currency area for wholesale payments because of the rand’s role and the robustness of SADC-RTGS.
Over the top of these, the AU’s African Monetary Institute and, later, an African Central Bank can coordinate standards, crisis-response tools and supervisory practices that convert a patchwork of rails into a network. None of this requires a single African note tomorrow to deliver benefits today.
The Global Framework in Writing
Africa’s route to any future currency sits within a clear, layered framework. At the continental level, the Abuja Treaty set the end-state of a monetary union, and Agenda 2063 gives the dated milestones: establish the African Monetary Institute, then the African Central Bank between 2028 and 2034. The AU has asked the Association of African Central Banks and its peer-review mechanism to monitor macroeconomic convergence against agreed criteria, an explicit nod to the Maastricht experience. The approval of the African Financial Stability Mechanism adds a crisis-prevention arm comparable to arrangements in other regions.
At the regional level, economic communities carry the load. ECOWAS has a 2027 working date for its single currency, supported by WAMI’s technical work. The EAC is pursuing a single currency in the early 2030s with a proposed East African Monetary Institute. SADC anchors cross-border settlement in rand via SADC-RTGS and has upgraded to ISO 20022, enabling straight-through processing and better compliance. These regional foundations are the bridge between national reforms and future continental institutions.
At the infrastructural level, the AfCFTA Secretariat and Afreximbank are scaling PAPSS so that African trade can clear in African currencies, lowering reliance on external correspondents and freeing scarce reserves. Complementary payment-system masterplans—like the EAC’s—aim to raise interoperability and local-currency use. The thesis is explicit: build the rails, and money will follow.
A Measured Conclusion
Can Africa pioneer the world’s next currency? The honest answer is that it is already pioneering something more durable: a continental monetary architecture built from the ground up. Payments are being modernised to global standards; rules of origin and tariff schedules are being extended; macro-convergence is being monitored with clearer targets; and financial-stability tools are being readied.
West Africa’s 2027 target and East Africa’s early-2030s horizon are the near-term test beds. The continental institutions, African Monetary Institute first, then the African Central Bank will set the keel. If policymakers stay this course, the world’s “next currency” may arrive less as a singular event and more as the culmination of a decade of quiet, rigorous institution-building. That story has already begun.
