Lobby calls for adoption of unified currency across Africa

An all-African lobby group is now calling on financial stakeholders to implement a centralized currency to be used in the continent.

Africans Rising co-coordinator Muhammed Lamin urged activists in respective countries to fast-track the process.

"If Europe can have Euro, what is stopping Africa from having Afro? It has been overdue that Africa is having more than 33 currencies," Lamin paused.

Lamin was speaking during the All African Movement Assembly held in Arusha.

He clarified that the lack of a unified currency has made it difficult for African countries to even trade together.

"We lose money to foreign exchange, wherever you go you have to change money three or four times," he said.

Lamin directed that African countries hasten the process of unifying states.

"We are calling on them to put mechanisms that will fasten the United States of Africa," he said.

AR co-coordinator Coumba Toure urged the activists to mainly deal with economic justice, climate justice and reparation.

"We need to work together to push the world to do reparation to Africans and black people," Coumba said.

On matters of borderless Africa, Coumba reiterated that Africans need to be allowed to move freely around the continent.

She tasked each country's representative present at the conference to push the agenda.

"We need to push out government to let us move across this continent," she added.

If this is implemented, the lobbyists want Africans to be able to travel within the continent only with their national ID cards and not passports.