250 Shillings Nelson Mandela

Somalia's central authority had largely collapsed by 2000, and what remained of the transitional government was issuing commemorative coinage with virtually no connection to domestic circulation — these pieces were produced explicitly for the international collector market, minted under licensing arrangements with private European firms. Mandela's appearance on a Somali coin is geographically arbitrary; his 1999 retirement from the South African presidency made him a commercially viable subject for exactly this kind of opportunistic issue.