ECOWAS, the regional bloc of countries in West Africa, has just revived an old dream: adopting a single currency across member states.

After first broaching the idea at the turn of the millennium, the target launch date for the single currency has been postponed several times after initially being slated for 2003.

The latest date to be agreed for the launch of the currency is 2020, with member states also agreeing to name it”ECO.”

A commonly held view as to why the policy is being contemplated is that governments in the region are keen on even more integration, in addition to existing visa-free travel.

But just as it has been for much of the past two decades, there are currently too many stumbling blocks in the way.

For starters, only five (Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal and Togo) of the region’s fifteen countries currently meet the single currency’s criteria of a budget deficit not higher than 4% and inflation rates of not more than 5%, notes Charlie Robertson, chief global economist at Renaissance Capital.

And while ECOWAS say the integration will be gradual as countries meet the criteria, it’s unlikely that a 2020 launch date is feasible at all.

Even though the date has been set, there is no significant progress as regards the design, production and testing of the currency notes.

Given that various economies in the region are at “dramatically different levels of development,” the leadership of ECOWAS is being unrealistic in both its timing for the currency’s launch and expectations of what it might achieve, Robertson says.

“You’ve got very different levels of debt, interest rates and budget deficits. Trying to align these countries to operate as one is extremely difficult,” he says.

“What currency policy is right for two such divergent countries like say Ghana and Burkina Faso?”

Those disparities are also particularly highlighted by Nigeria’s economic size in the region.

“Nigeria is 67% of ECOWAS’ GDP, so really this isn’t a single currency for 15 countries, this is the Nigerian naira plus a few countries,” Robertson says.

For its part, ECOWAS is keen to play up the hypothetical upside of a single currency possibly reducing the cost of trade across the bloc - but it does so while ignoring existing trade barriers.

As SBM Intel, a Lagos-based intelligence firm, notes in a research reporton the viability of the ECO, fixing underlying “structural issues” which hobble trade, including “inadequate supply chain infrastructure, arbitrary border tariffs and non-tariff barriers, abysmal corruption and wide-area insecurity” are all more viable solutions for boosting intra-bloc trade.

The French connection

In trying to create a single currency, ECOWAS will be looking to squash one which already exists: eight of its member states already use the France-backed the West African CFA franc.

As part of a long-running monetary agreement, those countries deposit half of their foreign reserves with the French treasury.

While the policy remains a subject of criticism in both African and European circles, untangling from such a complex and historic agreement will likely be a long and difficult process, says Cheta Nwanze, lead researcher at SBM Intel.

For Robertson, it’s “bizarre” that countries who use the French-backed currency will even consider revising their currency policy at all given the benefits of lower interest rates and currency stability.

“What’s been driving growth and investment in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal in the last 10 years has been high investment because of low interest rates which come from a stable currency guaranteed by France,” he tells Quartz.

“Why jeopardize that and align with countries with less stable currencies like Nigeria and Ghana and with much higher levels of inflation and interest rates?”

Quartz Africa

President of Rwanda, Mr Paul Kagame, has told President Muhammadu Buhari and other African leaders, that it is not enough to fight corruption – but to, also, add value to human life.

Speaking at Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) summit in Abuja, yesterday, Kagame congratulated Buhari on his victory at the poll and said Nigeria must share resources equitably, so everyone can join the fight against corruption.

He also called on the president and other attendees to add value, create wealth, while fighting corruption, and not merely to fight corruption.

“There is one of your own, who wrote a book, titled, ‘fighting corruption is dangerous,’ so, she gave me the book, and as I was looking at the title, I reminded her and said ‘you need to be thinking of writing another book to state that not fighting corruption is even more dangerous.’

“This is a fight that can be won. Tolerating corruption is a choice, not an inevitability. It is within our power to end it. That is the most important starting point, otherwise, it will be a waste of time to keep talking about it.

“Corruption does not take decades to eradicate once we decide to break the habit.

“We have to set our sights high, it is not enough to fight corruption just as merely fighting poverty, it is too small an ambition for Africa. We want to create value, we want to create wealth, not merely fighting corruption.”

Kagame said corruption must be fought from top to bottom, using four key principles: “culture, responsibility, accountability and effectiveness”.

“We must discard the myth that corruption is endemic to particular cultures. Corruption is a universal weakness, not an African one, and it is not part of our destiny as a continent. He said research has shown that “the biggest sources and beneficiaries of corruptions are outside of Africa.”

Sun

Nearly 100 people have been killed in an attack in a village in central Mali inhabited by the Dogon ethnic group, officials say.

The attack happened in Sobame Da, near Sanga town in the Mopti region.

The search for bodies is ongoing, but officials say 95 people have been found dead, with many of the bodies burned.

There have been numerous attacks in Mali in recent months, some ethnically driven, some carried out by jihadist groups. Clashes between Dogon hunters and semi-nomadic Fulani herders are frequent. Mali's government said "suspected terrorists" had attacked the village at around 03:00 local time. At least 19 people were still missing, it said.

But the mayor of nearby Bankass, Moulaye Guindo, told Reuters news agency that Fulanis from that district had attacked Sobane-Kou after nightfall.

"About 50 heavily armed men arrived on motorbikes and pickups," a survivor who called himself Amadou Togo told the AFP agency.

"They first surrounded the village and then attacked – anyone who tried to escape was killed."

"No-one was spared – women, children, elderly people," he added.

No group has officially said it was responsible for the attack.

"Right now we have 95 dead civilians. The bodies are burned, we are continuing to look for others," a local official told AFP.

What is the Dogon-Fulani conflict?

The Dogon people have lived in central Mali for centuries, and live a largely traditional way of life as settled farmers. Many Fulani, on the other hand, are semi-nomadic herders who move across large distances in West Africa. Friction between farmers and the roaming herders over resources is long-standing – but clashes between them have increased since a militant Islamist uprising in northern Mali in 2012. Both sides accuse the other of carrying out attacks amid the unrest. The Fulani, a largely Muslim ethnic group, have been accused of having links with the Islamist uprising.

But for their part, the Fulani accuse a Dogon self-defence association, Dan Na Ambassagou, of attacks on them. There is a growing view in Mali that the (mostly military) response to this multi-faceted crisis is ineffective and even counter-productive.

Despite having a large UN peacekeeping mission and French forces deployed since 2013, insecurity has worsened in some parts of the country.

According to International Crisis Group, there were four times more attacks in May 2019 compared to May 2016. In their latest report on the country, the group urges the government to engage in dialogue with militants to negotiate local ceasefires and facilitate humanitarian access to civilians in need.

After another massacre of Fulanis in March, senior officials were sacked, people took to the streets – and the entire government resigned in April.

Is this attack unusual?

The attack on Sobame Da has killed about a third of its inhabitants. In the same region in March, more than 130 Fulani villagers were killed by armed men wearing traditional Dogon hunters' clothing. After the attack, the Dogon Dan Na Ambassagou was banned by Mali's government. But the organisation, which insists it is a self-defence group and had nothing to do with the killings, refused calls to lay down its arms.

United Nations mission in Mali, in a report dated 31 May, said the security situation in central Mali "continued to deteriorate".

It said that clashes between the Dogon and Fulani had been "exacerbated by the presence of extremist groups", and that the central region had recorded the highest number of attacks against civilians.

Hundreds of people have been killed so far this year.

What effect did the Islamist uprising have?

There are several Islamist groups based in northern Mali. In 2013, they seized half of the country and were advancing on the capital, Bamako. France, the former colonial power in Mali, and some neighbouring African countries, intervened – and pushed the Islamist groups back towards their strongholds in the Sahara desert.

Before the unrest, disagreements between the Fulani and Dogon were often settled through negotiation. But the uprising - which had spread to the centre of Mali by 2015 - decreased government control and increased the availability of weapons.

BBC

A group of boys on bicycles gather on a dusty side-street in eastern Saudi Arabia. Foot on pedal, 10-year-old Murtaja Qureiris is about to lead the group of around 30 children.

In video footage obtained by CNN, he is wearing rolled up denim jeans and black flip-flops on his feet, and grinning at the camera recording the event.

It may look like a regular bike ride, but the group is staging a protest.

Moments after they set off, Qureiris gets lost in the sea of boys, struggling to keep up as he lifts a megaphone and presses it against his lips. “The people demand human rights!” he shouts.

As a boy, Qureiris participated in demonstrations like this bike ride, expressions of dissent in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province during the 2011 Arab Spring.

Three years after he was filmed taking part in the bike protest, Saudi authorities arrested Qureiris, then just 13 years old.

He was traveling with his family to Bahrain when he was detained by Saudi border authorities on the King Fahd causeway that connects the two countries.

At the time, he was considered by lawyers and activists to be the youngest known political prisoner in Saudi Arabia. Now, at the age of 18, Qureiris is facing the death penalty after being held for almost four years in pre-trial detention, CNN has learned.

In April, Saudi Arabia announced it had executed 37 men who, according to rights group Reprieve, were mostly from the kingdom’s Shia minority.

The country has one of the highest rates of execution in the world, and has frequently been criticized by rights groups for executing people who were minors at the time of the commission of crimes.

Qureiris was 10 years old when he committed at least one of those alleged crimes in his charge sheet, CNN has learned. He was charged with accompanying his activist brother, Ali Qureris, on a motorcycle ride to a police station in the eastern Saudi city of Awamiya, where Ali allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at the facility.

The age of criminal responsibility in Saudi Arabia is unclear, but in 2006 the kingdom told the Committee on the Rights of the Child that it had raised it to 12, according to Human Rights Watch. Saudi Arabia has also previously told the United Nations that it does not impose the death penalty on prisoners convicted of crimes before the age of criminal responsibility.

Qureiris is currently being tried at a terror court, where the prosecution has accused him of belonging to “an extremist terror group.”

He faces other charges ranging from violence allegedly committed during protests – including helping to construct Molotov cocktails — to shooting at security forces and marching at his brother’s 2011 funeral.

Qureiris has denied the charges and said that the confessions, which the prosecution has largely relied on, were obtained under duress, CNN has learned.

Saudi Arabia has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on his case.

CNN