500 Bipkwele

Equatorial Guinea's currency history through the late 1970s is a tangle of political rupture. The country abandoned the CFA franc zone in 1975 under Macías Nguema and introduced the ekwele — later pluralized as bipkwele — partly as an assertion of independence from the French monetary bloc. By 1979, the regime was collapsing from within; Macías Nguema was overthrown in August of that year by his own nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, and executed in September.

Notes from this 1979 issue therefore straddle a coup. The Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre in Madrid printed for several African issuers during this period, and the bipkwele series was among its more politically turbulent commissions.