1 Leone Bank Anniversary

Issued to mark the tenth anniversary of the Bank of Sierra Leone, founded in 1964 as the country's first central bank following independence from Britain three years earlier. The bank's establishment allowed Sierra Leone to retire the West African Currency Board, which had controlled the region's money supply from London since 1912 — a colonial arrangement that gave local governments no meaningful control over credit or monetary policy.

The copper-nickel alloy used here mirrors the composition adopted for British decimal coinage the same year, a practical choice for a mint-contracted commemorative rather than a signal of anything particular about Sierra Leone's monetary preferences at the time.