Is it time to ditch the dollar? With the dollar losing its value, there has been an increased call, particularly from emerging markets, that its role as the global reserve currency may no longer be tenable. What is the alternative and how would this work? What would be the impact on Africa? Richard Seymour discusses.

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Is it time to ditch the dollar? With the dollar losing its value, there has been an increased call, particularly from emerging markets, that its role as the global reserve currency may no longer be tenable. What is the alternative and how would this work? What would be the impact on Africa? Richard Seymour discusses.

Since the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, which set the direction for the world's financial system for the next 27 years, the US dollar has enjoyed the status of the global reserve currency - the currency in which almost all world trade is conducted.

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This meant that central banks all over the world needed dollars. And the way they got them was for the US to increase its imports, bringing in goods from all four corners, in exchange for its currency, still warm from the printing process that produced it.

By 1971, there were more dollars in the world than there was gold to back them,...

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