Bloc dismisses fake East African common currency

EAST AFIRCA: The secretariat of the East African Community (EAC) regional bloc has dismissed a post on X, formerly Twitter, which claimed that the bloc’s member countries have launched a common regional currency.

The post had been shared on Sunday by a fake X account named “Government of East Africa”.

The account said that the currency was called the East African Sheafra, a combination of the shilling of East Africa and Franc.

The account also shared an image of a fake banknote of the purported single currency.

The post has received over half a million views and was shared by some leading media outlets and online personalities in the region.

The EAC secretariat dismissed the report of a unified regional currency late on Sunday, saying that the creation of a single East African currency “is still a work in progress”.

“Kindly ignore any rumours circulating in social media on the unveiling of new banknotes for the region.”

In 2013, EAC member countries set a target for a single currency by 2024.

The bloc missed the target and pushed the delivery time for the single regional currency to 2031.