1 Dollar Cape eagle-owl

Eritrea issued this coin just four years after winning independence from Ethiopia in 1991, following a 30-year armed struggle — one of the longest independence wars of the 20th century. The Bank of Eritrea itself was only established in 1993, making mid-1990s issues among the earliest products of a genuinely new monetary authority with no prior institutional history.

The Cape eagle-owl does not inhabit Eritrea; its range is southern and eastern Africa. Whether this reflects a cataloging ambiguity or a deliberate choice by the issuing authority remains unresolved in the numismatic literature.