Algeria's bimetallic coinage program launched in the early 1990s coincided with one of the most violent periods in the country's post-independence history — the cancellation of the 1991 legislative elections triggered a civil conflict that claimed an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 lives over the following decade. Coins circulated through that period with the mundane persistence that small change always manages.
The aluminium-magnesium centre was an unusual material choice for the denomination, selected partly for its resistance to the oxidation problems that had plagued earlier Algerian issues in humid coastal circulation.
Algeria's bimetallic coinage program launched in the early 1990s coincided with one of the most violent periods in the country's post-independence history — the cancellation of the 1991 legislative elections triggered a civil conflict that claimed an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 lives over the following decade. Coins circulated through that period with the mundane persistence that small change always manages.
The aluminium-magnesium centre was an unusual material choice for the denomination, selected partly for its resistance to the oxidation problems that had plagued earlier Algerian issues in humid coastal circulation.