African Currencies at a Glance

Africa's 54 countries use 42 currencies: 40 national currencies plus the two CFA francs. The West African CFA franc (XOF) is shared by eight countries and the Central African CFA franc (XAF) by six. In southern Africa the South African rand (ZAR) is also legal tender in Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia, whose own currencies are pegged one-to-one to it (the Common Monetary Area). The most recent changes are Zimbabwe's ZiG (ZWG), introduced in April 2024, and Sierra Leone's redenominated new leone (SLE) from 2022.

List of African Currencies and ISO Codes

Every UN-recognised African country with its currency and ISO 4217 code, as of September 2026. Exchange-rate regimes are summarised in the last column; rates themselves change daily.

Western Sahara is a disputed territory, not one of the 54 countries. The Moroccan dirham (MAD) is used in the Moroccan-administered part; the Sahrawi peseta issued by the Polisario Front is commemorative, and the Algerian dinar circulates in the Sahrawi refugee camps near Tindouf. See our Western Sahara page.

Currency Changes Since 2018

• Mauritania (2018): the ouguiya was redenominated at 10 old ouguiya (MRO) to 1 new ouguiya (MRU).
• São Tomé and Príncipe (2018): the dobra was redenominated at 1,000 old dobras (STD) to 1 new dobra (STN).
• West African CFA reform (2019–2021): the BCEAO stopped depositing half its reserves with the French treasury and France left the bank's governing bodies. The euro peg and French guarantee remain, and the planned renaming of the currency to “Eco” has not happened.
• Sierra Leone (2022): three zeros were removed from the leone; the new code is SLE (1 SLE = 1,000 SLL).
• Nigeria (2023): the central bank unified its multiple exchange-rate windows, and the naira fell sharply as it moved closer to the market rate.
• Egypt (March 2024) and Ethiopia (July 2024): both moved to more flexible, market-based exchange rates as part of IMF-supported programmes.
• Zimbabwe (April 2024): the Zimbabwe dollar (ZWL) was replaced by the Zimbabwe Gold, or ZiG (ZWG), a currency partly backed by gold and foreign-currency reserves. The US dollar is still widely used alongside it.
• Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (January 2025): their withdrawal from ECOWAS took effect, but they remain members of the UEMOA monetary union and still use the XOF.

Shared Currencies in Africa

West African CFA Franc (XOF)

Used by 8 West African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The XOF is issued by the BCEAO (Central Bank of West African States), headquartered in Dakar, and is fixed at 655.957 XOF per euro.

Central African CFA Franc (XAF)

Used by 6 Central African countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. The XAF is issued by the BEAC (Bank of Central African States) in Yaoundé and is also fixed at 655.957 XAF per euro. Despite having the same value, XOF and XAF banknotes are not interchangeable.

Other euro pegs

Three island currencies outside the CFA zones are also tied to the euro: the Cape Verdean escudo (about 110.265 CVE per euro), the Comorian franc (about 491.968 KMF per euro, via an agreement with France) and the São Tomé dobra (24.5 STN per euro, via an agreement with Portugal).

Common Monetary Area (CMA)

The South African rand (ZAR) circulates as legal tender in Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia alongside the lilangeni (SZL), loti (LSL) and Namibian dollar (NAD), all pegged 1:1 to the rand. The reverse is not true: those three currencies are not legal tender in South Africa, so travellers should spend or exchange them before leaving.

The Eco: A Common West African Currency?

ECOWAS has discussed a single currency called the Eco since the early 2000s. In 2021 its leaders set 2027 as the new target launch date, but few members meet the convergence criteria on inflation, deficits and debt, and the timetable remains uncertain. The exit of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from ECOWAS in 2025, which left the bloc with 12 members, has made the project more complicated. Separately, the UEMOA countries agreed in 2019 to rename the West African CFA franc “Eco”, but as of 2026 the currency still circulates as the CFA franc (XOF).

African Currency Trivia

• The Tunisian dinar is a closed currency: it may not legally be imported or exported, so change it back before you leave. Morocco also limits how many dirhams you can take out.
• The Libyan dinar and Tunisian dinar are divided into 1,000 subunits (dirhams and millimes), while most currencies use 100.
• The Mauritanian ouguiya (5 khoums) and the Malagasy ariary (5 iraimbilanja) are the only circulating currencies with non-decimal subunits, although the subunits are rarely used today.
• Zimbabwe has changed currency several times since hyperinflation in the late 2000s: US dollars and other foreign currencies from 2009, a new Zimbabwe dollar from 2019, and the ZiG since 2024.

How Currencies Work Across Africa

With 54 sovereign states, Africa has 42 currencies in use. The number is lower than the count of countries because monetary integration has a long history on the continent: several groups of nations have chosen to share a single unit of money, while a handful of smaller states peg their currency rigidly to that of a larger neighbour. Understanding this landscape means looking beyond a simple country-to-currency list and recognising the colonial inheritances, regional alliances and economic strategies that shaped it.

Broadly, African currencies fall into a few categories. The largest group consists of fully independent national currencies — the Nigerian naira, Egyptian pound, Kenyan shilling, Moroccan dirham, Ethiopian birr and South African rand among them — each managed by its own central bank. A second group comprises the two CFA franc zones, where 14 countries use a currency they do not individually control. A third group is the Common Monetary Area of southern Africa, where the rand anchors the currencies of three smaller economies. Finally there are special cases such as Zimbabwe, which abandoned its own currency for the US dollar and other foreign units in 2009 and has since tried twice to reintroduce a national currency, most recently the ZiG in 2024.

Currency codes follow the international ISO 4217 standard, which assigns each unit a three-letter code. The first two letters usually represent the country and the third the currency name — ZAR for the South African rand, NGN for the Nigerian naira, EGP for the Egyptian pound, KES for the Kenyan shilling. A code changes when a currency is replaced or redenominated, which is why Mauritania now uses MRU, São Tomé STN, Sierra Leone SLE and Zimbabwe ZWG. The shared CFA francs are exceptions, using the X-prefixed codes XOF and XAF that the standard reserves for supranational units. The complete country-by-country table above lists every code, and you can explore the wider economic picture on our Africa GDP overview.

The CFA Franc Zones

No feature of African money is more distinctive — or more debated — than the CFA franc. It exists in two separate forms. The West African CFA franc (XOF) is used by the eight members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA, also known as WAEMU): Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The Central African CFA franc (XAF) serves the six members of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC): Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Both versions are pegged to the euro at the same fixed rate, and that peg is guaranteed by the French treasury. This arrangement gives the CFA zones an unusual degree of monetary stability: inflation has historically been lower and exchange rates far less volatile than in many neighbouring economies that run independent floating currencies. For traders and travellers this predictability is a genuine advantage. A crucial point of detail, however, is that although the two CFA francs share an identical value, they are not interchangeable — banknotes issued for the West African zone are not legal tender in the Central African zone, and vice versa. The West African notes are issued by the BCEAO in Dakar and the Central African notes by the BEAC in Yaoundé.

The CFA franc is also politically contentious. Critics argue that pegging to the euro and channelling reserves through France constrains monetary sovereignty and ties African economies to European decisions over which they have no say. Supporters counter that the stability and credibility the peg provides have spared the zones the runaway inflation seen elsewhere. A 2019 reform of the West African arrangement ended the requirement to hold half of the BCEAO's reserves in Paris and removed French representatives from its governing bodies, although the euro peg and the French guarantee remain. The Central African zone has not yet made a similar change. The long-discussed ECOWAS currency, the Eco, is intended eventually to supersede the West African CFA franc.

Pegged vs Floating Currencies

African central banks pursue very different exchange-rate strategies, and the contrast shapes daily life for businesses and travellers alike. At one end of the spectrum are tightly pegged currencies. The CFA francs are fixed to the euro, and the lilangeni, loti and Namibian dollar are pinned one-to-one to the South African rand. Morocco operates a managed regime in which the dirham tracks a basket of currencies weighted toward the euro and the US dollar, allowing the dirham to move within a controlled band rather than freely.

At the other end are floating or heavily managed currencies whose value is set largely by market supply and demand. Nigeria unified its exchange-rate windows in 2023, and the naira fell sharply as the official and parallel-market rates converged. Egypt let the pound float more freely in March 2024 and Ethiopia moved the birr to a market-based rate in July 2024, both after long periods of foreign-currency shortages. Floating regimes give policymakers flexibility to respond to commodity-price swings and capital flows, but they can also bring volatility that complicates planning for importers, exporters and ordinary households.

Between these poles sit numerous crawling pegs and managed floats, where a central bank guides the currency gradually rather than fixing or fully freeing it. The practical lesson for anyone exchanging money is that the headline rate you see today can differ markedly from the rate even a few months earlier, particularly for floating currencies.

Monetary Unions and Regional Plans

Africa has more experience with shared currencies than almost any other continent, and ambitions for deeper integration continue. The two established unions are UEMOA in West Africa and CEMAC in Central Africa, each with a single central bank, a common currency and coordinated monetary policy across its members. The Common Monetary Area links South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia through rand parity, functioning as a partial union in which the smaller members retain their own notes but surrender exchange-rate independence.

The most prominent forward-looking project is the Eco, a proposed single currency for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has had 12 members since Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger left in 2025. The Eco is designed to unite the francophone CFA users with anglophone economies such as Nigeria and Ghana under one currency, eventually replacing the West African CFA franc. Launch dates have repeatedly slipped because members have found it difficult to meet shared convergence criteria on inflation, deficits and debt. Beyond West Africa, the African Union has long articulated a still more ambitious vision of a single continental currency managed by an African Central Bank, but that remains a distant aspiration rather than a concrete plan. Regional context for these blocs is explored across our West Africa and Central Africa overviews.

Inflation and Currency Volatility

For many African economies, inflation and exchange-rate movement are among the defining features of the currency story. Floating currencies in particular have seen significant depreciation during periods of fiscal stress, commodity-price shocks or shortages of foreign exchange. The Nigerian naira, Ghanaian cedi and Egyptian pound have all experienced substantial declines against the US dollar in recent years as their governments adjusted away from overvalued official rates toward levels closer to the parallel market.

The most extreme historical example is Zimbabwe, whose dollar suffered one of the worst hyperinflations ever recorded in the late 2000s, ultimately forcing the authorities to abandon the currency and adopt the US dollar and other foreign units. Zimbabwe reintroduced a domestic currency in 2019, which also lost most of its value, and replaced it with the gold-backed ZiG in April 2024, illustrating how difficult it is to restore confidence once it has been lost. These episodes underline why the relative stability of the euro-pegged CFA zones is valued by their members, even amid debate over the costs of the peg. For travellers and businesses, the practical takeaway is to treat exchange rates for volatile currencies as snapshots that can change quickly.

Mobile Money: Africa's Payment Revolution

Any discussion of money in Africa is incomplete without mobile money, an innovation in which the continent leads the world. Rather than relying on bank accounts and card networks, millions of people send, receive and store value directly on their mobile phones. The pioneering and most celebrated service is M-Pesa, launched in Kenya, which transformed everyday payments and brought financial services to people who had never held a traditional bank account.

The model has since spread across East, West and Southern Africa, with major platforms operating in Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana and beyond. Mobile money is used to pay for goods, settle utility bills, send remittances between regions and even receive wages. For visitors, the implication is that cash and mobile transfers often matter more than international credit cards, which may be accepted only at larger hotels, airlines and upmarket establishments. In several markets a local SIM card linked to a mobile-money wallet can be one of the most convenient ways to transact.

Exchanging Money: Practical Tips for Travelers

Travelling across Africa rewards a little currency planning. Because so many local currencies are not traded internationally, it is often easier to carry a widely accepted hard currency — usually US dollars or euros — and exchange it on arrival rather than trying to obtain the local currency in advance. In the CFA zones the euro is the natural reserve currency to bring given the fixed peg, while US dollars are more useful in much of East and Southern Africa.

A few habits help avoid problems. Carry clean, recent banknotes: many exchange offices and businesses refuse worn, torn or older US dollar bills, particularly older-series notes. Use banks, licensed bureaux de change and ATMs rather than informal street dealers, who may offer attractive headline rates but short-change unwary visitors. Keep some small-denomination local cash for taxis, markets and tipping, since vendors often cannot change large notes. Remember that a few currencies, such as the Tunisian dinar, legally cannot be carried across the border, so spend or convert them before leaving. Finally, because rates for floating currencies move daily, check a current source before you travel and again before any large transaction. Practical mobility planning can also draw on our visa requirements and passport power guides.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many currencies are used in Africa?

Africa's 54 countries use 42 currencies: 40 national currencies plus the two CFA francs. Eight West African countries share the West African CFA franc (XOF) and six Central African countries share the Central African CFA franc (XAF). The South African rand is also legal tender in Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia alongside their own currencies.

What is the CFA franc?

The CFA franc is a shared currency used by 14 countries in two separate zones: the West African CFA franc (XOF) for the eight UEMOA members and the Central African CFA franc (XAF) for the six CEMAC members. Both are fixed at 655.957 francs per euro, with convertibility guaranteed by the French treasury. They have the same value but are not interchangeable: XOF notes are not legal tender in the XAF zone, and vice versa.

What currency does Zimbabwe use?

Zimbabwe's national currency since April 2024 is the Zimbabwe Gold, or ZiG (ISO code ZWG), which replaced the Zimbabwe dollar (ZWL). The US dollar remains legal tender and is widely used, especially for larger payments.

What is Sierra Leone's currency code?

Sierra Leone uses the leone with the ISO code SLE. In 2022 the country removed three zeros from its currency, so 1 new leone (SLE) equals 1,000 old leones (SLL).

Which is the strongest African currency?

By value per US dollar, the Tunisian dinar has usually been the highest-valued African currency, with the Libyan dinar usually second. A high unit value is not the same as economic strength, and rates change often, so check current market data.

Can I use US dollars in Africa?

US dollars are widely accepted for tourism, hotels and larger transactions in many African countries, and are legal tender or in everyday use in Zimbabwe, Liberia, Somalia and much of DR Congo. Most everyday purchases elsewhere require local currency, and worn or older-series dollar notes are often refused. Carry some local cash along with clean, recent dollar bills.

What is the Eco currency?

The Eco is a planned single currency for ECOWAS, which has had 12 members since Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger left in 2025. Leaders set 2027 as a target launch date in 2021, but few members meet the convergence criteria and the timetable is uncertain. As of 2026 the Eco does not circulate, and the West African CFA franc (XOF) remains in use.

Last updated: September 2026. Currency information is general and educational; exchange rates fluctuate daily — verify current rates before transacting.

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