5 Matonas - Hailé Selassié I

Ethiopia's 1931 coinage program was the first modern machine-struck series issued under Haile Selassie following his coronation in November 1930, replacing the older Maria Theresa thaler-dominated economy with a structured decimal system. The matona denominations were struck at the Heaton Mint in Birmingham, a facility that had supplied coinage to dozens of colonial and semi-independent states across Africa and Asia throughout the early twentieth century.

The matona system proved short-lived. Italian invasion in 1936 suspended Ethiopian monetary authority entirely, and Axis occupation currency displaced these coins before the series could see meaningful long-term circulation.