2 Francs

The Gouvernement Général de l'Afrique Occidentale Française turned to locally printed emergency fractional notes in 1917 because the war had made coin shipments from France erratic and increasingly unreliable. These 2 Franc notes were produced at the government press on the island of Gorée — a genuinely unusual arrangement, since most colonial paper money of the period was printed in the metropolitan country and shipped out.

The local production shows. Gorée's press lacked the technical resources of a security printer, and the resulting notes are visibly cruder than contemporary French colonial issues from Paris or London firms. Watermarking was included, but the overall print quality left these notes vulnerable to counterfeiting concerns almost immediately after issue.