1/10 Penny - George V

British West Africa was not a single administrative unit but a loose grouping of four separate territories — Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia — unified for currency purposes under the West African Currency Board, established in 1912. The 1/10 penny denomination was peculiar to this region, introduced partly to facilitate small-denomination trade in markets where cowrie shells had only recently been displaced as a medium of exchange. The fraction itself was calculated against local purchasing realities rather than any tidy decimal logic borrowed from London.