5 Centimes

Bougie-Sétif's Chamber of Commerce issued this emergency fractional note in 1916 because the wartime drain on metal coinage — copper and nickel requisitioned for the French war effort — left small transactions in the Algerian interior nearly impossible to conduct. Local chambers across Algeria were authorized to fill the gap with low-denomination paper, and dozens did. This note is one of the more obscure of that wave.

Adolphe Jourdan's Algiers press handled most of the official and semi-official printing work in colonial Algeria at this period. The designer credit to Moncade is rare enough to be worth noting — most comparable emergency issues went uncredited entirely.