Africa must rethink its monetary policy framework and back its currencies with their abundant natural resources to liberate the continent from debt, Professor Yegande Ihmotep Paul Alagidede, has suggested.
Like Switzerland and Saudi Arabia which backed their currencies with gold and oil, Africa must pursue same to protect their currencies from speculations from Western countries and from the current Western-inspired monetary system.
Prof. Alagidede, who is the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Chair in Finance and Economics and Professor of Finance at the Wits Business School, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, stated this at a lecture at the University of Ghana in Accra on Tuesday.
He said African countries must move beyond western monetary frameworks and adopt a new currency model guided by indigenous values, productive resources and modern technological systems such as block chain.
The inaugural lecture for the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Chair in Finance and Economics at the University of Ghana was organised by the University of Ghana Department of Economics, University of Ghana Business School and BoG.
Speaking on the topic “From Cowries to Crypto: A Long Arc of Monetary Policy in Africa,” Prof. Alagidede said the adoption of Western-inspired fiat monetary systems across Africa had weakened the continent’s currencies and entrenched economic dependency.
He noted that African currencies such as the cedi, naira, and franc had become vulnerable to external shocks due to their disconnection from the continent’s resource base.
According to Prof. Alagidede inflation in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and Egypt was driven not by excess demand but by structural inefficiencies, including poor logistics, reliance on imports and exposure to geopolitical shocks.
As a solution, he proposed a new paradigm called Metanomics, a fusion of ancestral African monetary systems and modern digital technologies, such as blockchain and algorithmic lending.
He said at the heart of the paradigm was the Resource-Based Monetary Sovereignty and Endogenous Resource-Backed Currency (RBMS–ERBC) model, which placed the creation of money to real, measurable assets like gold, cocoa, solar energy and labour.
Prof. Alagidede cited the practical application of the model through Nabiya Qapital, a pilot initiative rolled out in Bono and Northern Savannah regions.
He said under the scheme, farmers received digital tokens backed by their produce and access credit at lower rates through smart contracts, bypassing the need for commercial bank loans.
Prof. Alagidede noted that the pilot had resulted in a 30-per cent drop in inflation volatility and a 200 per cent increase in credit access to SMEs, demonstrating the transformative potential of the model.
In his remarks, Governor of BoG, Dr Johnson Pandit Asiama, said the establishment of the Chair marked a long-term commitment to developing sound economic knowledge that would inform policy.
“This Chair will serve as a catalyst for cutting-edge research in inflation dynamics, exchange rate management, digital finance, regulation of virtual assets, and financial stability,” he said.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, described the event as “a significant step towards reimagining the role and relevance of Africa’s economic scholarship.”
She said, “This Chair represents a bold commitment to driving research innovation, fostering policy engagement, and nurturing future leaders… Africa’s development will be determined not by emulating external strategies, but by forging a path rooted in our own assets, intelligence, and aspirations.”
She affirmed the University’s commitment to providing the platform for innovative research that addressed Africa’s unique development challenges.
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