20 Centavos

The Companhia de Moçambique was a chartered company granted administrative and economic control over the territories of Manica and Sofala from 1891 — a colonial concession arrangement that gave it the authority to issue its own currency entirely separate from the Portuguese colonial administration in Lourenço Marques. This note is a product of that unusual quasi-governmental status.

Bradbury Wilkinson printed the series in London, a natural choice given the firm's long relationship with colonial concession issuers across Africa. The 1919 date places this issue in the post-war period when small-denomination paper was filling a chronic coin shortage across Portuguese Africa.