20 Leones

Sierra Leone's 20 Leones notes of this period were issued during a stretch of acute economic difficulty — the early 1980s saw the country running chronic balance-of-payments deficits and growing dependence on IMF support, which gave circulating banknotes a harder working life than in more stable economies. De La Rue's involvement was continuous across multiple Sierra Leone series, and the P#14 shares plate lineage with adjacent denominations in the 1980–84 program.

The single watermark security feature was minimal even by the standards of the time. Counterfeiting pressure on West African notes of this denomination was real enough that later issues required additional protection.