Crossing Borders, Counting Coins. Taxation and Multiple Currencies at the Haute Volta/Gold Coast Border in the Early Twentieth Century

Colonial boundaries exerted a significant influence on African monetary practices, particularly in border areas. The role of taxation, which often varied among different colonies, in shaping these practices remains less clear, especially when colonial borders divided economically homogeneous regions. This article, focusing on the Ghana/Burkina Faso border in the early twentieth century, examines the consequences of diverging fiscal policies on African monetary practices. It investigates colonial monetary policies, taxation, and the cross-border flow of currencies, illustrating how African traders devised monetary circuits through the manipulation of cowries and different colonial currencies. Drawing on the findings of archival research in both francophone and anglophone countries, the article demonstrates that colonial currencies vied with one another and displayed notable dynamism, shaped by the fiscal policies of different colonial powers and political-territorial divisions. Moreover, it shows that people upheld the use of cowries as a buffer currency between two different fiscal regimes and two different colonial currencies.