20 Pounds Independence; With flag

South Sudan's independence on July 9, 2011 made it the world's newest nation at the time, and this bimetallic issue was struck to mark that moment — one of the rare cases where a country's first coinage and its founding date are effectively the same event. The young republic inherited severe infrastructure deficits from decades of civil war with Khartoum, and establishing a functioning mint and monetary system from scratch was itself a logistical undertaking.

Aluminium-centre bimetallic coins of this type were an economical choice for a government with limited hard currency reserves in its opening years.