100 000 Dobras

São Tomé and Príncipe adopted the dobra as its currency in 1977 following independence from Portugal, but by the 2000s chronic inflation had pushed face values into six figures for everyday transactions. The 100,000 dobra denomination, introduced in 2005, was among the highest-value notes the central bank had ever issued — a direct consequence of decades of monetary pressure on what remains one of the smallest economies in Africa.

Thomas De La Rue's involvement here is routine for Francophone and Lusophone African issuers of this period, though the security package on P#69 is relatively lean for the denomination: watermark only, without the foil strip or color-shifting ink found on contemporaneous high-value issues from comparable nations.