Keypoints:
- AMI deadline reset to September 2026
- South Africa, Egypt reserve on Article 30
- PAPSS expands local-currency African payments
AFRICA’S decades-old ambition for a single currency has entered another critical phase, with African Union leaders setting September 2026 as a renewed deadline for the African Monetary Institute to begin operations as groundwork for an eventual continental central bank and common currency.
The target is significant not because an African currency is imminent, but because the institute is intended to build the monetary cooperation and economic convergence required before one could realistically emerge. It also resets an earlier September 2025 operationalisation target that was not achieved, highlighting the difficult road between political ambition and implementation.
AU resets monetary institute deadline
The latest timetable was approved at the African Union’s 39th Ordinary Assembly in Addis Ababa in February 2026.
In its decision on African Union financial institutions, the Assembly called on member states to ensure that the African Monetary Institute, or AMI, becomes operational by September 2026.
It also urged African central banks to second staff to the institute, include its financial requirements in their budgets and ensure sufficient resources are available for it to commence operations.
The renewed deadline represents a delay in the integration timetable.
A year earlier, at its February 2025 summit, the AU had called for the institute to be operationalised by September 2025. That target passed without the AMI becoming operational, prompting leaders to set another deadline for September this year.
The African Union describes the AMI as a key milestone towards establishing an African Central Bank and, eventually, a single African currency.
Its immediate work is expected to focus on strengthening monetary cooperation, harmonising policies and helping African economies move towards the macroeconomic convergence necessary for monetary union.
Zuma’s Accra call gains new context
The latest developments give new relevance to a debate revived in Accra last year by former South African President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma delivered the University of Professional Studies, Accra Annual Leadership Lecture on August 19, 2025, under the theme The geopolitics and geo-economics of de-dollarisation: BRICS+ currency strategy, lessons for Africa’s common currency and beyond.
According to UPSA’s account of the address, Zuma urged African governments to reduce external dependence, deepen continental economic cooperation and exercise greater control over Africa’s resources and financial future.
Contemporary Ghanaian reporting quoted him declaring: ‘One Africa, one currency, one destiny.’
His call attracted attention because of his political profile, but a single currency was already embedded in the AU’s long-term integration plans.
What has changed is that an institution specifically designed to prepare Africa for eventual monetary union is moving closer to operation, albeit later than initially intended.
South Africa, Egypt enter reservation
The AU process is also not without complications.
A footnote to the Assembly decision adopting the African Monetary Institute statute records that South Africa and Egypt entered reservations specifically concerning Article 30.
The published Assembly decision does not explain the substance of those reservations, meaning it would be wrong to conclude from the document alone that either country opposes the wider objective of African monetary integration.
The distinction is especially relevant in South Africa’s case.
Zuma, a former president, has publicly championed the idea of a continental currency, but he no longer speaks for the South African government. Pretoria’s reservation on Article 30 therefore cannot responsibly be interpreted as either support for or opposition to the broader single-currency project without further official clarification.
That uncertainty illustrates one of the political challenges facing continental monetary integration: agreeing on the institutions is only part of the process. Governments must also agree on their powers, rules and relationship with national authorities.
PAPSS offers a faster route
Africa does not, however, need to wait for a single currency to reduce reliance on the dollar and other foreign currencies in intra-African trade.
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, or PAPSS, already allows participating financial institutions to facilitate cross-border payments using African currencies.
That addresses a longstanding problem in continental trade, where transactions between two African businesses have often required conversion into dollars or another international currency before final settlement.
The expansion forms part of a wider African shift towards local-currency trade settlement.
In February 2026, Afreximbank announced that Kenya’s Pesalink network was being connected with more than 160 PAPSS participating banks, giving more than 80 Pesalink participants access to cross-border local-currency settlement.
Africa Briefing has also reported on PAPSS’s ambition to process 80 percent of African payments within five years.
The infrastructure could become increasingly significant as the African Continental Free Trade Area expands commerce across a market where intra-African trade is approaching $230bn.
A common currency remains difficult
Creating a continent-wide payments infrastructure is considerably easier than creating a monetary union.
Countries sharing a currency surrender substantial control over national monetary policy. Interest rates and other decisions must increasingly reflect conditions across the currency area rather than the economic circumstances of a single country.
Africa’s economies differ sharply in inflation, debt, fiscal performance, foreign reserves, export structures and levels of financial development.
An oil-exporting economy facing a collapse in commodity prices could require a very different monetary response from a tourism-dependent state, agricultural importer or diversified manufacturing economy.
That is why the AU’s monetary integration programme places such emphasis on macroeconomic convergence.
Participating economies must progressively align indicators including inflation, public debt, fiscal deficits and reserve positions before a genuinely sustainable monetary union becomes possible.
The AMI should therefore be viewed as preparatory architecture rather than evidence that a continental currency is around the corner.
BRICS is not creating one currency
Zuma’s Accra speech also connected Africa’s monetary debate with BRICS and the broader push towards de-dollarisation.
But the two processes should not be confused.
BRICS has not agreed to establish a shared currency.
During Brazil’s 2025 presidency of the bloc, Brazilian BRICS Sherpa Maurício Lyrio said a common BRICS currency was not under discussion. Attention instead centred on increasing the use of national currencies, lowering transaction costs and improving cross-border payment systems.
That may offer the more immediate lesson for Africa.
Local-currency settlement can expand without waiting for governments to surrender their national currencies or establish a continental central bank.
Africa is therefore pursuing two related but distinct tracks.
PAPSS is tackling the immediate mechanics of cross-border settlement, while the African Monetary Institute is intended to build part of the longer-term institutional architecture required for monetary union.
The renewed September deadline is therefore important, but it should be viewed against the missed 2025 target.
Africa’s single-currency ambition is moving forward, but the slow pace of implementation, complex convergence requirements and unresolved institutional questions show why the journey is likely to remain measured rather than rapid.
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