From Currency Board to Central Banking: The Politics of Change in Sierra Leone

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Periodical article

Title:	From Currency Board to Central Banking: The Politics of Change in Sierra Leone
Author:	Uche, Chibuike U.
Year:	1996
Periodical:	African Economic History
Volume:	24
Pages:	147-158
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Sierra Leone
Subjects:	central banks monetary policy Economics and Trade
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/3601850
Abstract:	The most important institutional change in the evolution of the monetary and financial system of Sierra Leone was the replacement of the West African Currency Board (WACB), established in 1912, by the Bank of Sierra Leone in 1963. This article analyses the underlying processes and forces that determined this development. It outlines monetary activities in Sierra Leone during the precentral banking era and provides a chronology of the events which culminated in the establishment of the Bank of Sierra Leone. It pays attention, amongst others, to the opposition of the Bank of England to the concept of central banking and the establishment of central banks in Ghana (1957) and Nigeria (1958), and concludes that the political change that swept through the West African subregion in the 1950s and 1960s made the collapse of the WACB inevitable. Notes, ref.