1 Kwanza

Angola's post-independence coinage of 1977–79 was issued under the newly established Banco Nacional de Angola following the MPLA's consolidation of power after a brutal civil war that had fractured the country since independence in 1975. The kwanza itself replaced the escudo at par, a deliberate break from colonial monetary infrastructure. Coin production during this window was intermittent, dependent on foreign minting contracts, as domestic industrial capacity had been gutted by both the war and the exodus of Portuguese technical workers.