5 Kwacha - Pope John Paul II

Issued the year John Paul II died, this commemorative coincided with one of the most globally televised deaths of the twentieth century — an estimated 2 billion people watched his funeral in April 2005. Malawi was among dozens of nations that rushed commemorative issues to market within months, producing pieces aimed squarely at the international collector trade rather than domestic circulation.

KM#98 is a relatively late entry in Malawi's long history of issuing papal and religious commemoratives for export revenue, a practice the country leaned on heavily through the 1990s and 2000s.