20 Kwacha

The Reserve Bank of Malawi was established only in 1964, the year of independence, and for much of its early history relied entirely on Thomas De La Rue for production — a relationship that continued uninterrupted well into the 1990s. By 1990, Malawi was deep into a one-party state under Hastings Banda, and the central bank operated under tight political constraints that offered no room for independent monetary policy. The kwacha itself had been introduced in 1971, replacing the Malawian pound at par with the British equivalent.

P#26 carries only a basic watermark as its sole security feature — modest even by the standards of regional contemporaries printing at the time.