5 Shillings FAO

Issued as part of the FAO's global coinage initiative, which persuaded dozens of nations throughout the late 1960s and 1970s to mint coins bearing agricultural themes tied to the "Food for All" campaign. Somalia's participation came just nine years after independence from the Italian trusteeship administration, at a point when the civilian government of President Shermarke was still nominally intact — he would be assassinated in October 1969, barely a year before this coin's issue date, with Siad Barre's military coup following days later.

The coin was effectively struck under a revolutionary government that had no part in commissioning it.