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.
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.