20 Scellini / 20 Somali Shillings

The Banca Nazionale Somala was Somalia's central bank from independence in 1960 until it was replaced by the Somali National Bank in 1975. This series, printed by Thomas De La Rue across a four-year window, was issued during a period that bracketed a pivotal rupture: the October 1969 coup in which General Mohamed Siad Barre seized power following the assassination of President Shermarke. Notes issued before and after that date circulated under very different political realities, though the physical notes themselves were unchanged.

The bilingual denomination — Scellini and Shillings — reflects Somalia's post-colonial administrative inheritance from both Italian and British Somaliland.