20 Senti

Tanzania's first decimal coinage, introduced in 1966, replaced the East African Currency Board issues that had circulated across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika as a shared colonial monetary system. The new Bank of Tanzania series was among the earliest assertions of fully independent monetary administration in East Africa, coming just five years after Tanganyika's independence and two years after the union with Zanzibar that created the republic.

The long production run through 1984 reflects chronic shortages in small-denomination coinage rather than consistent demand — a pattern common across sub-Saharan Africa in the post-independence decades.