When Katy Léna Ndiaye (Dakar, 1968) first imagined this group of children, filmed in newly independent Senegal in the 1960s, reciting La Fontaine’s fable “The Peasant and His Children” in chorus and by heart , she couldn’t get rid of it anymore. Head. Written in 1668, this story, which promotes work as a guarantee of prosperity, was part of the educational program in French colonial Africa and in the metropolis, where she also learned it. “It doesn’t make the same sense to recite it in France as in Africa,” he explains after the presentation of his documentary “Money, Freedom, a History of the CFA Franc in Spain” at the Afrikaldia Basque Festival of African Cinemas in early October.
These images, found in the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA), motivated them to tell, in a story-like way, for almost two hours, the historical, technical and political peculiarities of the currency that today still links France with seven million people who live in their former African colonies .
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The FCFA has become a symbol of the arsenal of tools used by the colonizing country to maintain its controversial influence in the region. The currency, used by 14 countries on the continent, is considered a remnant of colonialism. Its value is linked to the currency used in France (formerly the franc, now the euro), so its exchange rate is fixed. Since the mid-2010s, and for the first time since independence, youth movements and intellectual elites have promoted numerous public demonstrations in cities such as Dakar, Cotonou, Libreville or Bamako and in the Paris region, calling for their disappearance.
In a conversation without tact or haste, Ndiaye reflects on her two-decade-long career as a journalist in Belgium, her leap into the cinema as a director and producer, her interest in portraying a “different Africa” and her great concern to give people time already devote the topics. The film can also be seen at the Invisible Film Sozialak International Film Festival in Bilbao on October 21st and 24th.
Questions. What did you think when you saw African children reciting La Fontaine?
Answer. Suddenly I understood this fable as a metaphor of the CFA franc: the farmer is the (French) empire that does not want to die, so before it dies and to be sure of continuing to exist, it offers its children (the independent African) to states) the recipe they must follow: “Don’t change anything.” It’s a metaphor: the CFA franc is a lie, a fable, a story that keeps you awake.
Q And from there, you decide to tell your story in the form of a story. Why use this resource on such a technical and complex topic?
R. Lepoon liboon is a symbol to start a story in Senegal, but also a formula to open a surreal world in which this currency is located for me. I asked a traditional accountant who was authorized to narrate, and he replied that it was the person who was committed to telling the story to the end. So that’s how I did it. It took me eight years.
Q It begins with an anecdote in Saint Louis, in his family home. To what extent does a currency influence everyday life?
R. Economics and finance seem to be such big topics that we think we can’t understand them, so we delegate them to our leaders…. It is something immense, but it is present in everyday life. “The CFA franc is not everything, but it is in everything,” says one of the respondents. I wanted to use a biographical anecdote to tell how we deal with money. Before I went to the market, my grandmother gave me a coin so I could spend it on whatever I wanted. Through this gesture, adults have passed on the CFA franc to us and given us, future generations, the responsibility to decide what we want to do with it.
Q What does this coin symbolize?
R. The CFA franc sends us into a chain, that of the slave trade and the slavery economy; to a rope, that of the forced labor horse during the colony, which served to enrich the French in their dealings with the metropolis. Maintaining it was a prerequisite for independence, and it was only with the devaluation in 1994 that we realized the great violence behind it: our purchasing power was reduced by half. Now this currency is sending us to Europe, to the Eurozone, to which we are connected via France, without having decided. It is a shared history, part of our shared heritage, for better or worse. It goes beyond economics, it goes beyond big politics, the right to self-determination.
Q In Africa money is used differently than in Europe. Does this have consequences for currency dependence?
R. In our societies, money is not something to be kept but moved, and the person who circulates it is useful because it makes the community function. Paradoxically, the richest is the one who has emptied his account because he has built relationships with many people. When you greet someone, symbolically give them money. The Cameroonian economist and sociologist Martial Ze Belinga explains it in the film: If we do not control the exchange rate (of the FCFA to the euro), we cannot control the country’s internal politics. Sovereignty is an element that is brought up again and again in the documentary. One of the interviewees explains how French soft power works in the region: military bases, access to raw materials and currency.
Q To what extent does this film shed light on current events in the Sahel?
R. Although it is not a current film, the history of the currency helps to understand the atypical and toxic relationship between France and its former colonies, which is the basis of the reaction that is manifesting itself in countries such as Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso and The bottom line is that you need to build a new relationship. There is a certain saturation of a certain youth who, like the experts, cannot explain with words and technical details what is happening, but who feel excluded from this asymmetrical relationship that always benefits them. It’s time to end this relationship, we have to do it quickly. It is not a hatred of France or Europe, it is a desire to take the reins and decide our own destiny.
Q What do you intend to do with this documentation?
R. It is a film for the youth: my intention is to ask my generation and the following generations what we will do with this history that has been left to us. In all these years there has never been a moment of reflection about what kind of society we want to create for ourselves and what currency we need for this. It is time to do this and to create a utopia, to stimulate the imagination, to invent a different relationship with Europe.
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