20 Shillings

Somalia's first post-independence banknote series was printed by De La Rue, but by the time this note entered production the country was already two years into the disastrous Ogaden War with Ethiopia — a conflict that began in 1977 and drained foreign reserves rapidly. The Central Bank was issuing currency into an economy under severe military strain, with Soviet and then Cuban intervention having swung the war decisively against Mogadishu by 1978.

The P#23 series ran across four years without design revision, which itself reflects institutional inertia rather than stability. De La Rue's watermark security was relatively modest for the period.