1 Escudo

Portuguese Guinea's coinage in the early 1930s was administered under the Colonial Act of 1930, Salazar's instrument for tightening Lisbon's economic grip on overseas territories and forcing their budgets into strict dependency on the metropole. Local currency was a tool of that policy as much as a practical necessity. This nickel brass issue replaced earlier silver-content coinage as a straightforward cost-reduction measure during the fiscal austerity Salazar imposed across the colonial system.

The KM#5 is the first and only escudo denomination struck for Portuguese Guinea in this alloy and size, running through a long production span that outlasted several metropolitan coin reforms.