2 Francs

Madagascar was administered as a French colony under a single unified authority that also governed the Comoros and other Indian Ocean dependencies — hence the cumbersome issuing name. The 1916 date places this squarely in the middle of the First World War, when the metropolitan French economy was under severe strain and small-denomination coinage had largely disappeared from circulation throughout the empire due to metal hoarding and wartime requisition.

These emergency fractional notes were a stopgap against the resulting change shortage. Survival rates are low; the lightweight paper used for low-denomination colonial issues of this period deteriorated quickly in humid tropical conditions.