2 Francs

Issued in 1944 under the Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, this small-denomination note was a direct response to the near-total disappearance of coin from circulation following the Allied landings in November 1942. Hoarding and wartime disruption stripped North Africa of small change almost overnight, and these fractional paper notes — printed locally by Jules Carbonel in Algiers rather than shipped from metropolitan France — were the practical fix. The "Région Économique" attribution was essentially administrative cover, allowing currency issuance outside normal Banque de l'Algérie channels.

With over twelve million printed, scarcity was never the intention. Surviving high-grade examples are nonetheless harder to find than the print run suggests, partly because wartime paper quality in Algiers was inconsistent across the run.