Since 2023, the leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have repeatedly announced the end of the currency inherited from colonial rule. Having come to power through coups between 2020 and 2023, then sanctioned and suspended by their neighbours, they broke with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the fifteen-member organisation created in 1975 that provides for the free movement of people and goods and maintains an intervention force. They established their