** This is the problem …
Like other local fishermen, Dieye was struggling to survive on earnings of roughly 20,000 CFA francs ($33) a month.
“There are no fish left in the ocean,” Dieye laments.
Years of overfishing by larger industrial vessels from Europe, China and Russia had wiped out Senegalese fishermen’s livelihoods, reducing their previously abundant catch to a few small crates of fish — if they were lucky — and pushing them to take desperate measures.
Once is saw CFA i knew exploitation was the main problem.
Historically, the CFA system has also generated additional revenue for France by requiring CFA nations to deposit initially 100 percent and, in recent years, 50 percent of their reserves in France’s Treasury, where it served as productive interest-bearing capital. Between 1945 and the introduction of the euro in 1999, French authorities devalued the CFA franc against the French franc by 99.9 percent, increasing French purchasing power against African nations and subsidizing the French way of life.