DAKAR (AFP) - Few people lined up in Senegal's capital on the first day of a 40 million euro (49 million dollar) campaign to replace old banknotes with new ones across the eight countries of the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa.
Dakar bank tellers waiting in anticipation for hordes of people to come in and exchange their torn and tattered old banknotes for new ones, which represent half of the bills in circulation around the region, sat idly as the crowds failed to materialize.
"They'll come at midday or later, and anyway, they have until December 31 to change their bills," noted Lydia, a teller at the Bank of Africa.
Come January 1, some 850 billion CFA francs (1.3 billion euros) in bills from the 1992 series will no longer be considered legal tender in Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.
The massive commission-free currency change campaign is a bid to remove worn bills of all denominations from circulation and to end the scourge of counterfeiting that was rife with the old banknotes.
The new series of banknotes, manufactured in France since last year, incorporates a number of security measures that makes them harder to duplicate.
The CFA franc is the common currency of many former French colonies and a few other African countries. Its value was pegged to the French franc and then to the euro when this replaced many European currencies.
The central bank decided in December last year to withdraw the 1992 series from circulation, aiming to "harmonize" currency flows across the eight UEMOA countries, according to a statement from the bank.
Critics are finding fault not with the changeover itself but with the short time frame citizens will have to turn in their old bills, particularly those in far-flung rural areas.
The BCEAO has released little information about its planned public information and awareness campaign but bank officials are confident that the deadline will be met.
Others worry that the widespread illiteracy in the zone could make people particular prey for bill-changing scams. A change in color of the 5,000 CFA franc note has also prompted fears that illiterate populations will misidentify the bills and get shortchanged by less-than-scrupulous merchants.
Bank tellers in Mali are also on the lookout for bills from the series that were stolen in a string of bank robberies in restive northern Ivory Coast.
Bank officials say that tellers have memorized the serial numbers on the banknotes stolen from central bank branches in Korhogo and Bouake, strongholds of the rebels who remain in control of the north of the world's top cocoa producer two years after their failed coup against President Laurent Gbagbo.
An extra security detail will be on hand to help make sure that stolen bills were not being laundered through the currency changeover, bank officials added.