Letter From The President: The new cedi

Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents, bankers, cashiers, traders, kenkey, bofrot and waakye sellers, taxi and trotro drivers, farmers and fishermen….and anyone who uses the cedi, I am sure you were all surprised to hear about the Sikaman Central Bank’s plans to “re-denominate” the cedi. First, most of you didn’t understand what the heck that meant. I am still not very sure what it means to “re-denominate” a currency. But from the little I gather, all it means is that a few zeros are going to be removed from the currency. As you are well aware, our cedi has one zero too many. You need 2000 cedis to buy a ball of kenkey these days. But there was a time when you needed just about 2 cedis to get yourself a ball of kenkey, some fried fish and shitor.

The decision to re-denominate, according to how my fickle mind understands it, will take us back to the day when you could use the cedi in single figures to buy whatever you needed. So instead of paying school fees of 467,000 cedis, you might soon be paying fees to the tune of just about 46.7 cedis. Remember, 46.7 cedis currently is very useless – it can’t even get you ‘alewa’. You remember ‘alewa’, don’t you?

Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents, bankers, cashiers, traders, kenkey, bofrot and waakye sellers, taxi and trotro drivers, farmers and fishermen….and anyone who uses the cedi, I am sure you were all surprised to hear about the Sikaman Central Bank’s plans to “re-denominate” the cedi. First, most of you didn’t understand what the heck that meant. I am still not very sure what it means to “re-denominate” a currency. But from the little I gather, all it means is that a few zeros are going to be removed from the currency. As you are well aware, our cedi has one zero too many. You need 2000 cedis to buy a ball of kenkey these days. But there was a time when you needed just about 2 cedis to get yourself a ball of kenkey, some fried fish and shitor.

The decision to re-denominate, according to how my fickle mind understands it, will take us back to the day when you could use the cedi in single figures to buy whatever you needed. So instead of paying school fees of 467,000 cedis, you might soon be paying fees to the tune of just about 46.7 cedis. Remember, 46.7 cedis currently is very useless – it can’t even get you ‘alewa’. You remember ‘alewa’, don’t you?