June 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Kenyan President William Ruto has urged African countries to stop using the dollar for intracontinental transactions during a speech in the Djibouti parliament.
“How is it that the US dollar is part of the trade between Kenya and Djibouti? Why?” Ruto said during his speech, explaining that the pan-African mechanism of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) allows African traders use their respective local currencies.
However, the Kenyan president has clarified that his intention is not to oppose the dollar, which would continue to be used in operations carried out from the United States, but that he intends to promote “freer trade”, according to the Today News Africa news portal.
The use of the dollar is being increasingly questioned in the international sphere. Recently, China and Brazil signed a joint declaration that highlighted the idea of strengthening trade in local currencies beyond the dollar, and proposed the use of the BRICS New Development Bank as an institution from which to trade and finance through local currencies. .
The Chinese yuan is one of the main beneficiaries in this regard, and has already managed to unseat the US dollar as the most exchanged currency in Russia due to the effect of Western sanctions and the euro as the second most present currency in the international reserves of the Central Bank of Brazil.
For China, paying for trade with other countries in yuan is an opportunity to continue expanding the global use of its currency, to the detriment of the US dollar. The People’s Bank of China has signed such currency deals with some 40 countries since 2008 to promote the international use of the yuan.