100 Ekuele

Equatorial Guinea issued this note in 1975 under the Macías Nguema dictatorship, one of the most brutal regimes in postcolonial African history. The country had adopted the ekuele in 1975 to replace the peseta guineana, severing the last formal monetary tie to Spain following independence in 1968. Thomas De La Rue handled the printing, as they did for much of the Banco Popular series — a practical arrangement given the near-total collapse of domestic institutional capacity under Macías.

The regime's economic mismanagement was catastrophic; by the late 1970s, the formal banking system had effectively ceased to function, and notes from this period saw highly erratic circulation patterns.