25 Francs

The Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale served as the note-issuing authority across French West Africa from 1901 until its dissolution in 1962, operating as a private commercial bank with a state-granted monopoly — an arrangement that attracted sustained political criticism both in Paris and across the territories it served. This particular issue spans a date range that crosses the Liberation and the early years of the Fourth Republic, meaning notes from the early part of the run were circulating in colonies whose political status was actively contested and soon to be reshaped by the 1946 Loi Lamine Guèye.

Chapon and Régnier were both accomplished intaglio engravers working within the Banque de France's highly disciplined atelier tradition — the pairing of separate obverse and reverse engravers on a single note was standard French practice, not an exception.