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African Governments Opt for Gold Amid Rising Distrust in Dollar

African Governments Opt for Gold Amid Rising Distrust in Dollar
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Several African nations, like Nigeria, Madagascar, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe, are taking precautionary measures to boost their gold holdings to offset geopolitical risks and support their currencies against inflationary pressures and economic turmoil.
A number of countries in Africa have smartly realized that diversifying their foreign currency reserves by including gold in their asset portfolio is a strategic move, and by doing so, they "insulate against external shocks," providing financial security and stability during economic crises, notes Ebenezer Bugri Anarfo, an Associate Professor of Finance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration Business School, Accra, Ghana.

"These [African] countries are doing so in order to reduce the overreliance on the United States dollar. The United States dollar is creating a lot of economic instability in the African continent. It appears that for any African country to transact business in Europe or anywhere, they would need the dollar. And most of the time, their currencies are not also strong. They are always depreciated in value and all that, creating a lot of economic instability," says Anarfo.

In his view, Joseph Chisasa, a Professor of Finance at the College of Economic and Management Sciences, University of South Africa, believes that conceptualizing money as backed by assets like gold can empower African nations financially and lessen their reliance on the American dollar, weakening US economic influence.

"If we define money as representative of assets such as gold, we'll actually give African countries a better financial muscle than they have now. You know, its reliance is heavily placed on the American dollar, which tends to subordinate the African economies to the Americans, and I think this is where we need to be moving away from [...]. But I think that the more the gold reserves we accumulate, the more independence we have from American imperialism," remarks Chisasa.

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