by Mohamed Gibril Sesay
In today’s global economy, financial strength isn’t just measured in production output or trade flows. It’s built on trust on whether the world believes in your currency, your institutions, and your long-term stability. The United States, through the dollar, operates with an immense surplus of symbolic and fictional capital—the power to convert global belief into monetary advantage. Thus the U.S. runs a surplus in symbolic capital by monetizing trust, institutional credibility, and the narrative of stability. That surplus is as valuable—sometimes more so—than oil, tech, or even military might.
West Africa, by contrast, does not have access to these swap lines. The Leone cannot be used as collateral in global dollar arrangements. Central Banks in West Africa must source dollars through market mechanisms, often with tough conditionalities and high interest rates. The countries must stockpile dollar reserves, essentially paying insurance to remain viable in an external system it doesn’t control. In essence, West African countries find themselves constantly borrowing not just dollars, but the trust that gives those dollars weight.
When financial crises hit, the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, also called the Feds opens central bank liquidity swap lines. These swaps allow central banks of key allies of America – like those of Japan, the EU, or the UK – to swap their own currencies for dollars, no market conditions attached. No auctions. No middlemen. These are not simple loans- they’re expressions of mutual trust. The dollar flows not only because of need, but because of credibility, because they are allies in many other areas. That mutual institutional trust, symbolic capital and financial nepotism amongst buddies doesn’t appear in balance of payments data, but it’s powerful. The U.S. can ‘spend’ this trust – this symbolic surplus—to stabilize global systems, or sanction countries, or bans entities within nations. So paddy-paddy business, financial diplomacy amongst friends; or going South, what we may call ‘financial nepotism’ is also embedded in it.
These countries show up at the dollar well with silver pans that the American Federal Reserve considers as clean. The acting as the global water master, allows them to dip their silver pans without hesitation- and tells them to come back anytime.
West African countries don’t get the same treatment. They don’t walk to the well with silver pans. They show up – figuratively – with old, warped five-gallon rubber’ or jerry cans. You know the kind: reused cooking oil containers, stained, dented, leaking around the cap. And they get told: “Sorry, we can’t allow you to dip that into our water well o. Go get your dollar liquidity from other water wells- the IMF, Foreign Private Banks.”
This financial exclusion isn’t merely technical—it’s deeply symbolic. It reflects a hierarchy of belief, where some states are seen as worthy borrowers, and others as risk-prone dependents. The U.S. exports not just liquidity, but a narrative of stability.
It’s how the global financial system works. Thus, even West African economies—Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal—can’t use their own currencies as collateral in global dollar swaps. They must borrow from markets or institutions like the IMF, often on tight conditions and high interest rates. And even when these countries accumulate dollar reserves, it’s not out of abundance—but out of fear of exclusion. The old, stained jerry can becomes the symbol of precarious participation: always fetching, never trusted.
In the CFA Franc zone—eight West African countries including Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali—the picture is more complex. These countries don’t carry jerry cans. They arrive with metal pans, shinier than their neighbors’, because the CFA is pegged to the Euro and backed by France.
But even this symbolism is borrowed. They have a fine pan, but it’s the neighbor’s name that is written on it. And in Krio we say ‘beg sol nor day cook’ – begging for salt won’t cook your food’ – dependency, we could say, does not bring development. The peg provides stability and credibility, but monetary policy isn’t fully theirs. The symbolic capital is real, but it’s not organic. It comes from France’s global reputation—not from institutions in Bamako, Dakar, or Ouagadougou.
The U.S. can create dollars out of thin air, and the world will take them—because it believes in the system. This is fictional capital in the capital that exists as a claim on future production or value, not as something already realized. Every time a foreign central bank swaps its own currency for U.S. dollars, it’s reinforcing the narrative that U.S. dollars are the safest, most liquid asset on earth. And that construction holds not because of material production alone, but because of the U.S.’s accumulated symbolic capital: its reputation, legal system, global reach, and military backing.
This mix of fact and fiction however is being tested. Under the Trump administration, policies on tariffs, NATO, and security in Ukraine weakened allies’ confidence. Questions emerged about whether the U.S. could be trusted to underwrite the very system it created. But here’s the striking thing: the law of inertia still works, it takes time for a vehicle at high velocity to stop – the US and its selected financial allies have been together in that vehicle of high trust velocity or speed, that it’s difficult for it to just stop or jump off without grave injury. It is still moving though the signs of its slowing down are becoming very visible in the light of happenings since the Second Trump Administration. Whilst the U.S. sits at the driver’s seat, exporting liquidity and symbolic capital, core allies (EU, Japan) and emerging powers may be adding brake system where they are, like those in those vehicles that train new drivers, where the instructor side of the vehicle have its independent stake system. Meanwhile, peripheral states in this global order, like those in West Africa, import both dollars and the belief systems that sustain them—without the power to reciprocate.
To escape this hierarchy, West Africa needs more than growth. It needs to generate its own symbolic capital in the form of Regionally coordinated monetary policies (e.g. reviving the ECOWAS Eco project). West Africa needs transparent, credible national central banks, Stronger African-led debt sustainability frameworks and credit rating systems and Political stability that builds investor and domestic confidence in national currencies. Until then, the region will remain at the well with worn-out containers, always borrowing both liquidity and legitimacy.
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Image: ChatGPT
