5 Centimes Chambers of Commerce Coinage

French Somaliland's Chamber of Commerce began issuing its own emergency coinage in 1920 when the metropolitan supply of small-denomination coins collapsed entirely under postwar disruption. These chamber issues — produced in zinc rather than the bronze used before the war — were a private commercial stopgap, legally tolerated but never officially sanctioned by the French colonial administration. Djibouti's geographic isolation as a transit port on the Gulf of Aden made the shortage acute: without functional small change, the market economy of the town simply stalled.