10000 Francs / 2000 Ariary

The dual denomination — francs and ariary — reflects Madagascar's prolonged refusal to fully commit to either currency system after independence. The ariary had been the traditional unit of account long before colonization, and when the Malagasy franc was introduced under French rule, the ariary never disappeared from everyday use. The central bank's solution was to print both, with five francs equaling one ariary, a ratio baked into every note in this series.

Thomas De La Rue produced this series through the mid-1980s, a period when Madagascar was under Didier Ratsiraka's socialist-aligned government and foreign exchange was severely constrained — making the cost of overseas security printing a notable political awkwardness.