10 Birr / Ethiopian Dollars

Ethiopia's postwar monetary infrastructure was thin, and the State Bank of Ethiopia — established in 1942 as a joint venture with the National Bank of Egypt — served simultaneously as central and commercial bank until the two functions were formally separated in 1963. The dual denomination on this note, pairing Birr with Ethiopian Dollars, reflects a deliberate transitional nomenclature: the Maria Theresa thaler had dominated Ethiopian commerce for centuries, and local acceptance of a paper birr required anchoring it to something already legible to a skeptical public.

Security Banknote Company of Philadelphia printed several African issues during this period, but their Ethiopian work is among the less-documented commissions in the firm's history. Three distinct signature combinations — Blowers, Bennett, and Rozell — indicate the series spans multiple senior appointments at the bank across its eleven-year run.