10 Birrs Arms with plough, White hatched sides

Ethiopia's Derg regime — the military junta that had deposed Haile Selassie in 1974 — was still in power when this note was issued, which explains the socialist-era state arms replacing the imperial iconography of earlier series. Thomas De La Rue had printed Ethiopian currency through the imperial period as well, and the relationship continued without interruption through the political transformation, a commercial continuity that sat awkwardly alongside the regime's ideological posturing.

The P#38 series is the last De La Rue-printed issue before Ethiopia's banknote contracts shifted in the early 1990s.