5 Lisente - Letsie III

Lesotho's coinage was interrupted entirely during the military rule of the early 1990s, and the return to constitutional monarchy under Letsie III in 1996 — after a politically turbulent sequence involving his father Moshoeshoe II's forced abdication, Letsie's own brief reign, and Moshoeshoe's restoration before his death — meant the Central Bank was effectively rebuilding a national currency identity from scratch. This series was among the first issued under Letsie's permanent reign.

The brass-plated steel composition replaced earlier bronze pieces, a cost-driven shift common across southern African small denominations in the late 1990s.