1 Libra

The Companhia de Moçambique was a chartered company — not a government — granted administrative and commercial control over the territories of Manica and Sofala by Portugal in 1891. It issued its own currency, maintained its own military, and effectively ran a private colony until its charter expired in 1942. This note, printed by Bradbury Wilkinson in London, circulated within that company-administered territory, not across Mozambique as a whole.

By 1934 the company was in visible decline, its revenues insufficient to sustain the administrative apparatus the charter demanded. The libra denomination itself reflected a deliberate peg to sterling rather than the Portuguese escudo.