0,50 Franc

Madagascar's World War One emergency cardboard fractional issues were a direct response to the near-total disappearance of metallic coinage from circulation after 1914. With silver and bronze drained toward the war effort, the colonial administration in Tananarive authorized these stiff cardboard pieces as provisional substitutes — more token than banknote, yet issued under formal government authority.

The cardboard substrate makes survivorship a genuine problem. Humidity in Madagascar is brutal on paper goods, and these pieces were never designed for longevity. P#33C is the rarest of the three 50-centime variants distinguished by minor typographic differences in the issuing text.