½ Dinar Country map

Tunisia's ½ Dinar entered circulation during a period of acute economic strain following the 1987 "Medical Coup," in which Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ousted Habib Bourguiba — the country's founding president — by invoking a constitutional clause declaring him medically unfit to govern. The Banque Centrale de Tunisie was simultaneously navigating IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs that had sparked bread riots the previous year.

The KM#318 attribution places this among a broader coinage reform series introduced under Ben Ali's new government, which sought visible breaks with the Bourguiba-era iconography.