1000 Francs CFA Zebra

The BCEAO — the common central bank serving eight West African francophone nations — issued this piece not as a circulating coin but as a foreign exchange earner, part of a wave of wildlife-themed collector issues produced by African monetary authorities throughout the 1990s. Most were struck at European mints on contract, primarily Monnaie de Paris, with distribution handled entirely outside the issuing region. The populations that nominally "issued" these coins rarely, if ever, saw them.