You are projecting the euro on the CFA franc, which is dead wrong. These are simple and very small economies, completely dependent on the world economic climate and the price of the agricultural goods they produce most. Unemployment is so high it doesn't count as an economic goal any more. The inflation rate is stable, but growth depends on exports and domestic violence. If you need a battery of economic experts, mostly disagreeing, to steer the EUR, GBP, USD or JPY economy, you might control the CFA-franc economies with one highschool economics teacher if there weren't mouths to feed and enemies to beat back.
The whole system is an artificial mechanism controlled from Paris, where all the big cheques are payable. The minister of finance is a relative of the president. He and the president are pampered, while the minister's advisor is a civil servant from Paris, who takes the decisions. The exchange rate is fixed, the interest rate (and, some say, the inflation rate) is set in Paris. The army doesn't get a bloated budget, also because the foreign legion sees to it that the right guy remains president. I am exaggerating, but not by all that much.
The results are marginal. Ivory Coast used to be one of the best performing countries in Africa when Houphouet-Boigny was dictator. It drifts along with the rest now. Mali used to be one of the poorest countries on earth. Part of it does better now, because South American drugs smugglers use it as a staging point for flying drugs into Southern European countries. Another part is devastated by extremist islamist who have escaped from Libya, touaregs at odds with the rest of the world and the French army, driving both out. Sort of.
At best, the system has not contributed to the common African vicious cycle of revolts and tribal conflicts, letting all important clans get rich in turn so their clan elders can retire somewhere outside Africa. It may have prevented excessive killing sprees. At worst, it is preventing nominally independent countries from finding their own way. It is neither a success, nor a failure. Just not a solution.
Peter
