The Monetary Geography of Africa

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank a great number of our colleagues at the IMF and World Bank, UN Economic Commission for Africa, WAMI, other official institutions, and in academe. Our collaboration began when Christian François, then in the IMF’s African Department, suggested that we analyze the proposed monetary union for ECOWAS. Each of us had earlier worked on currency issues for Africa, and we are grateful for the encouragement of Paul Collier, Ernesto Hernández-Catá, and Charles Humphreys in that regard. Our work on ECOWAS was greatly assisted by the hospitality and information provided by WAMI in Accra, Ghana, and especially by Ernest Addison, Rebiliy Asante, Siradiou Bah, and Michael Ojo. This book grew out of our earlier collaboration as well as involvement with the CFA franc zone by Masson, who would like to thank his collaborators in that work at the IMF, especially Ousmane Doré, Christian Durand, Papa Ousmane Sakho, Pierre van den Boogaerde, and Johannes Wiegand; the BCEAO and the BEAC for hospitality provided in Dakar, Senegal, and Yaoundé, Cameroon, respectively; and Philippe Bonzom, Christian DeBoissieu, Patrick Guillaumont, Sylviane Guillaumont-Jeanneney, Célestin Monga, and Marc-Olivier Strauss-Kahn for interesting discussions on the book’s topics. We would like to thank Ratna Sahay and Miguel Savastano, who supported Pattillo’s work on the book. The book itself has benefited from comments from several of those listed above as well as Christopher Adam, Luis de Azcarate, Hugh Bredenkamp, xv Acknowledgments 2284-00_FM.qxd 10/27/04 11:12 Page xv Donal Donovan, Pierre Ewenczyk, A. Laure Gnassou, John Green, Charles Harvey, Eric Helleiner, Jacqueline Irving, Christiane Kraus, Luca Ricci, Klaus-Walter Riechel, Jon Shields, Meshack Tjirongo, Romain Veyrune, and many others in the IMF African Department. Benjamin Cohen encouraged us to undertake the project, which is inspired by his own work, and gave us detailed comments on the outline. Gerald Helleiner generously read through a late draft, making detailed comments as well as highlighting contentious issues. Ashoka Mody provided some data for chapter 5. The building blocks for our book were presented at various conferences, including the American Economic Association annual meeting (New Orleans, January 2000); Caisse des Dépots et Consignations/Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales conference on monetary unions (Santiago, Chile, March 2002); regional currency areas conference sponsored by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Accra, Ghana, October 2002); and seminars at the Bank of Canada and University of Aix-Marseille. We would like to thank Frank Bohn, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Patrick Osakwe, Malcolm Knight, and Gilles Nancy for offering us the opportunity to present our ideas in conferences and seminars. A conference at the Bank for International Settlements on regional currency areas (September 2002) provided insights and useful contacts, for which we are grateful to Philip Turner and John Hawkins. Indispensable inputs to our analysis of Southern Africa, Botswana, and SADC were obtained thanks to Masson’s visits to Pretoria, South Africa, and Gaborone, Botswana. The visits were arranged with the kind assistance of Lambertus van Zyl and Donald Stephenson. Masson would especially like to thank, among the many whom he met there, Werner Brümmerhoff, Derek Hudson, Keith Jefferis, Brian Kahn, Christopher Loewald, Elias Masilela, Oduetse Motshidisi, Andrew Motsomi, Jay Salkin, and Moeketsi Senaoana. We would especially like to acknowledge our debt to our close collaborators . Xavier Debrun has coauthored with us several papers on monetary unions in Africa, and this book builds on that work. Heather Milkiewicz put together much of the data used in this book, has mastered the technology of creating maps, and has done much of the statistical analysis. Manzoor Gill and Nese Erbil also provided some excellent research assistance. Finally, Masson would like to thank the Brookings Institution, and, in particular, Carol Graham and Robert Litan, for providing excellent facilities and support without which the book would not have been possible. Thanks also are extended to Randi Bender and Janet Walker for their conscientious editing and Eric Haven for his careful research verification as well as Vicki Chamlee for proofreading and Julia Petrakis for indexing. xvi acknowledgments 2284-00_FM.qxd 10/27/04 11:12 Page xvi ...