1000 Francs

The Banque Nationale du Rwanda was established in 1964, just two years after independence, and early note issues were produced under tight foreign exchange constraints — the printing contract with Thomas De La Rue reflects a practical dependence on established Commonwealth-adjacent printers that persisted well into the late 1980s. By 1988, Rwanda's economy was under serious strain from collapsing coffee prices, its dominant export, and the 1000-franc denomination carried real purchasing weight in a country where per capita income had fallen sharply.

P#21 is a relatively short-lived type, superseded as the political crisis of the early 1990s accelerated currency reform ahead of the catastrophic events of 1994.