10 000 Francs

Djibouti's 10,000-franc note is the top denomination of a small-country series that had to work unusually hard — the country has no central bank in the conventional sense, and the Banque Nationale de Djibouti functions partly as a currency board, maintaining a fixed peg to the U.S. dollar that has held since 1973. That peg is why this note survived a fifteen-year print run essentially unchanged: stability by design, not inertia.

Banque de France printed the series, a common arrangement for Francophone African states long after formal independence. The two-signature format — Trésorier and Gouverneur — reflects the dual administrative oversight built into the institution's charter.