20 Centavos

Cape Verde issued its first national coinage in 1977, two years after independence from Portugal, as the newly formed republic worked to establish monetary infrastructure entirely from scratch. The Banco de Cabo Verde had only been founded in 1975, and these aluminium pieces represent the institution's earliest circulating issues.

Aluminium was a deliberate choice for the lower denominations — cheap to source, light to ship across the archipelago's scattered islands, and resistant to the corrosive salt air of the Atlantic.