1 Matona - Hailé Selassié I

Ethiopia's 1931 coinage was struck to mark the coronation of Haile Selassie I the previous year, formalizing a new denominational system under his imperial authority. The matona — a subdivision of the newly established birr — replaced the older Maria Theresa thaler-dominated economy that had persisted in Ethiopia long after most African nations had adopted decimal colonial currencies. Selassie commissioned the series through a European mint, part of a deliberate modernization program intended to signal sovereignty to foreign powers at a time when Italian imperial ambitions toward Ethiopia were already becoming difficult to ignore.