20 Escudos

São Tomé and Príncipe declared independence from Portugal in July 1975, and this 1976 issue was among the first series produced for the newly established Banco Nacional — a state bank standing in for a central bank in a country that had virtually no banking infrastructure at independence. Bradbury Wilkinson, by then a well-practiced supplier of currency to emerging postcolonial states, handled the commission from their New Malden facility.

Pick 44 belongs to a short-lived series; the escudo was replaced by the dobra in 1977, meaning notes of this denomination had less than two years of legal tender status.