25 Santeem - Hailé Selassié I

Ethiopia's 1944 coinage — including this issue — was struck at the Philadelphia Mint under a contract arranged partly through American wartime influence in the region. Haile Selassie had returned to Addis Ababa in 1941 after five years of Italian occupation, and the new coinage series was among the first concrete expressions of restored sovereignty. Philadelphia was the practical choice: Ethiopian minting infrastructure had been disrupted, and American production capacity was briefly available between wartime priorities.

The KM#36 series used a brass composition at a moment when copper was still a strategically monitored material in the United States.