500 Francs Eurafrique Program

The Eurafrique program was a short-lived Franco-African development initiative promoted in the early 1970s as a framework for economic cooperation between France and its former African colonies. Senegal issued this piece — along with several other West African states — as part of a coordinated commemorative series tied to that program. The timing was deliberate: President Senghor was among the initiative's most vocal champions, and the coins functioned as much as diplomatic objects as numismatic ones.

Struck to .917 fineness at the Paris Mint, mintages across this Eurafrique series were extremely low, with most individual country issues numbering in the hundreds.