Ghana's 1967 coinage reform followed directly from the fall of Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. The new military government, the National Liberation Council, replaced the Cedi that bore Nkrumah's portrait with a decimalized currency deliberately scrubbed of his image — a conscious act of damnatio memoriae in metal. The pesewa system launched that year was as much a political statement as a monetary one.
Ghana's 1967 coinage reform followed directly from the fall of Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. The new military government, the National Liberation Council, replaced the Cedi that bore Nkrumah's portrait with a decimalized currency deliberately scrubbed of his image — a conscious act of damnatio memoriae in metal. The pesewa system launched that year was as much a political statement as a monetary one.