20 Shilingi 20th Anniversary of Independence

Tanzania's independence from British rule came in December 1961 under Julius Nyerere, who then spent the following two decades steering the country through his Ujamaa socialist experiment — a policy of forced villagization that, by 1981, had left the economy in serious strain. The commemorative program that produced this coin was itself partly a foreign-exchange exercise, with silver issues primarily sold to overseas collectors rather than circulated domestically.

A base-metal version (KM#13) was struck for local circulation; the .925 silver variant was the export product.