David Sankok, a Kenyan member of the East African Legislative Assembly has tabled a resolution recommending that the East African Community (EAC) use local currencies to boost cross-border trade, the local media said.
According to the legislator, it would facilitate commerce, accelerate the enactment of the proposed EAC single currency, save the regional countries' money charged as third-party exchange fees, bolster domestic currencies and "break the chains of economic neo-colonialism."
The bloc should turn to local currencies since using the greenback is costly, Sankok noted.
"Inter-country trade [amongst] EAC partner States and between the EAC members and other economic blocs is becoming expensive, punitive, cumbersome, inconvenient and troublesome due to the [use] of the US dollar," the official stressed, adding that the US dollar still leads in the region's transactions.
The legislator raised the example of a Ugandan trader who, in order to buy goods in neighboring Tanzania, must first exchange Ugandan currency into dollars and then greenbacks into Tanzanian currency, losing some money on commissions.
Speaking of concrete initiatives, Sankok underlined that the community has forged a common market and customs union to foster trade and has committed to developing a currency union to ease the use of a single currency for the group.
The De-Dollarization Trend
Calls for a shift from dollars in favor of local currencies are growing louder on the African continent.
One of the brightest preachers of this trend has been Kenya's President William Ruto, who has increasingly questioned the necessity of the US currency in intra-African trade.
"From Djibouti selling to Kenya or traders from Kenya selling to Djibouti, we have to look for US dollars. How are US dollars part of the trade between Djibouti and Kenya? Why?" Ruto said in mid-June.
Earlier Ruto noted that "subjection to a dollar environment" has been impeding payments for goods and services between African countries.
At the global scale, the BRICS countries are likewise working on the development of a single currency for the bloc to ditch the US dollar.
On Friday, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who has previously admitted that he "dreams" of a single BRICS currency to gain independence from the dollar, announced that Brazil intends to raise the issue at the bloc's upcoming summit in South Africa in August.
"Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade?... Who decided the dollar would be the [world's] currency?" the leader noted during his official visit to China this April.
In response, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia "will participate with interest in this discussion."