The CFA is a French acronym which means Communaute Financiere Africaine.

The CFA is a currency used by fairteen French speaking countries in the west and central Africa.

      In Africa the CFA has 2 zones managed by 2 central banks.

The bank of central Africa State( BEAC) and the central Bank of west Africa States(BCEAO).The countries of BEAC are comprises Cameroon,Congo, Gabon,Chad, Central Africa Republic, Equatorial Guinee

      On the other hand 8 countries use BCEAO which consist of Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togo, Niger, Benin,Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea Bissao.

      The 2 CFA zone are commonly linked by 2 separate monitory unions.The central Africa Economic and Monitory Union CEMAC and the Economic and monitory union of West Africa state. The bank of central Africa state BEAC was setup in 1972 with headquarters in Yaounde with a capital of 45 billion CFA franc. It serves as the central Bank of the Cemac Zone.

FUNCTIONS OF BEAC

• It defines the monetory policy of CEMAC
• It prints the CFA franc
• It manages all exchange transaction in mobile state.
• It guarantee the stability of the CFA franc
• It serve as the lender of last resort.

COMMERCIAL BANKS AFFILIATED TO BEAC

• United Bank of Africa(UBA)
• Standard Chartered Bank(SCB)
• Afriland First Bank
• Bank Atlantic.

FUNCTIONS OF COMMERCIAL BANKS

• Commercial banks receives serving
• They grand loans
• They provide saving account and pay out customers saving on request.
• They provide over draft facilities.
• They issue travelers cheques.
• They provide customers with credit cards.

COBAC

      COBAC is an organ of BEAC specialized to over see the regularities of all banks operation within CEMAC.It is the responsibility of COBAC to  issues bank tails to obey the law of the licenses.

MICRO FINANCE INSTITUTIONS

      It is COBAC that issue licenses to all micro finance institutions examples of micro finance in Cameroon; Express union, Express exchange etc.