100 Francs

Mali's first post-independence currency series was managed under a politically fraught arrangement. After leaving the West African Monetary Union in 1962, Mali established its own franc and its own central bank — a deliberate break from the CFA zone that France had anchored. By 1967, the country was already in economic difficulty, and the Malian franc would eventually be devalued and the series replaced in 1984 when Mali rejoined the CFA arrangement entirely.

Thomas De La Rue's involvement here is unremarkable in itself — the firm printed for dozens of newly independent African states — but the London origin is worth noting given the sharply anti-French political posture Mali maintained through much of the 1960s under Modibo Keïta.