20 Meticais

The 1986 aluminium issue came directly out of Mozambique's acute post-independence economic crisis. The country was effectively bankrupt — civil war between FRELIMO and RENAMO had devastated infrastructure, and the government had exhausted its capacity to source the cupro-nickel used in the earlier version of this same denomination. Aluminium was the affordable fallback, not a planned transition.

The "a" suffix in the KM reference flags it as the emergency metal variant, distinguishing it from the original KM#103 struck in harder alloy.