New Ghana Cedi - the Value is the Same!

As Ghana moves forward it has decided to do away with the cumbersome Ghanaian Cedi currency we have come to love... soon the days of coming back from the bank with literal 'wads' of cash in 'rubbers' (i.e. plastic bags) will be just an anecdotal memory. And a funny one at that. The problem is that the government isn't sure that the general public will grasp the conversion. It is quite tricky after all: 10,000 old cedis will be 1 new cedi.... could easily confound someone... but no worries. There has been a tiresome ad campaign to sensitize the Ghanaian populace. Check it out here on: Official Ghanaian Government website!

Comments

arieltm said…
Wow, that's amazing. Very catchy tune, too.

"The value is the same" is very confusing, though. The value is NOT the same! Isn't that the whole point of changing your currency? If you tried to buy something and paid with 10 of the new currency, the vendor could say "You owe me another 99,990. Remember, 'the value is the same!'"

I hope they call the new currency something different, because otherwise won't it be confusing? If it has the same name, and the value really IS the same, then why bother printing new money at all?

It's interesting that they're willing to allow the old currency to be exchanged for the new currency indefinitely. The Euro only had a few months, if I recall correctly. I guess that was a different story, because it was really important to replace the old currencies, maybe to prevent people from using the old currency as a form of value for black market transactions?

Anyway, great post. Now I'm going to have that song in my head all day...
7:05 PM
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