The Economic community of West African states , in French; Union Economique et Monetaire Ouest-Africaine (UEMOA) is an organisation of 8 West African States who all use the West African CFA franc. the currency is administered by the Banque Centrale des Etats de l'Afrique L'Ouest (BCEAO). BCEAO was renamed in 1959 from its predecessor which was set up in 1955. Members of UEMOA and members of the West African Monetary Zone ( WAMZ) make up the bigger organisation of The Economic community of west African states (ECOWAS) . the members of WAMZ are mainly english speaking countries and intend to issue a new currency (ECO)for themselves in 2015. each country within the union has the same currency but can be identified by their letter code.
Members of UEMOA with their Identifying lettercode :
Benin (B)
Burkina-Faso (C)
Ivory Coast (A)
Guinea Bissau (joined in 1997) (S)
Mali (D)
Niger (H)
Senegal (K)
Togo (T)
Monetary Units:
1 Franc +100 Centimes
The notes above are to give an idea of how to identify the year of issue and the country code. The country code is the letter in brackets above and the year of issue is the first two numbers of the serial number.
The first two notes above, are both 1000 franc notes. the first one has the country letter S in the bottom centre left and denote Guinea-Bissau, the serial number starts with 00 and therefore is from the year (20)00. The next one down has the letter A for Ivory Coast and the serial number starting with 97 and is therefore from 1997.
both notes have a woman's head and people carrying bags of peanuts up a hill behind her. The next note down is the back of the 1000 franc note with tribal art and two women carrying baskets
The next two down are the fronts of 500 franc notes, both have a man on the front with a dam in the background and tribal art and a man on a garden tractor on the reverse. The first has country letter B for Benin and a serial number starting with 02 (2002) and the second, C for Burkina Faso and the the year is 2002. The last note above is the back of the 500 franc note.
The first two notes are the front of the 2003 issue 1000 franc notes. he issue date is 2003 (when they were first issued) but the actual print dates are different. the first with letter D for Mali has been printed and distributed in 2005, whereas the second one has the letter H for Niger and was released in 2004. the front of these note have tribal art and representations of learning on the front and camels on the reverse.
The last note above, in blue, is the 2000 franc note with letter K for Senegal and release date of 2003. the front is similar to the 1000 franc note above but has representations of transport and the reverse has fish swimming on it.
This note is the slightly older note dated as 1978 and has the country letter code T for Togo. on the front is a woman and fishing boats in the background. the reverse has a wooden mask of a man and boats in the background.
