2 Pula

Botswana's pula replaced the South African rand at par on 23 August 1976, a deliberate severing of the monetary link to Pretoria that had persisted since independence in 1966. The ten-year delay was not indecision — it reflected the practical difficulties of building a central bank and mint infrastructure from scratch in a landlocked, sparsely populated country still heavily dependent on South African trade networks.

Thomas De La Rue handled the entire inaugural pula series. Pick 2 is among the first notes ever issued under the Bank of Botswana name.