1 Pula

The pula replaced the South African rand at par in 1976, two years after Botswana's formal departure from the Rand Monetary Area — a deliberate assertion of economic independence from Pretoria at a time when the apartheid government still exerted considerable financial leverage over neighboring states. The word itself means "rain" in Setswana, carrying obvious weight in a country where roughly 70% of the land is Kalahari desert.

The brass-plated steel composition adopted for this series reflects a cost-driven reformulation common among African central banks after copper and nickel prices spiked in the 2000s.