10 Cents Thika Camp

POW Camp No. 5 at Thika, Kenya held Italian prisoners captured during the East African campaign — primarily from the fall of Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia in 1941. Camp scrip of this type was issued to allow prisoners to make canteen purchases without handling official currency, a standard British military practice that also prevented currency from being accumulated and used in escape attempts.

Locally printed in Kenya rather than produced by an established security printer, the physical quality is accordingly rough. The Cambridge reference confirms authenticity but surviving examples are genuinely rare — camp populations fluctuated and most scrip was demonetized and pulped at the war's end.