5 Francs Grand-Bassam

The Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale was the privileged institution granted sole right of issue across French West Africa, and this note — assigned to Grand-Bassam, then the administrative capital of Côte d'Ivoire — was part of a regional series where the place of payment was typeset locally onto a shared printed base. Grand-Bassam lost its capital status to Bingerville in 1900, which means notes bearing its name were already issuing from a city in administrative decline.

Bellery-Desfontaines was primarily a poster artist and illustrator, an unusual choice for banknote design work. Florian's engraving for the Banque de France was meticulous, and the parent institution's involvement as printer guaranteed technical quality that colonial treasury notes of the period rarely achieved.