50 Birr / Ethiopian Dollars

The State Bank of Ethiopia was itself a short-lived institution — established in 1942 after the restoration of Haile Selassie and dissolved in 1963 when its commercial and central banking functions were split between two separate bodies. This note falls squarely in that transitional window. The dual denomination "Birr / Ethiopian Dollars" reflects a deliberate bilingual policy aimed at facilitating foreign trade and international legibility at a time when Ethiopia was actively rebuilding its financial infrastructure after Italian occupation.

Bradbury Wilkinson had a long track record printing currency for newly reconstituted or developing states across Africa and Asia. The watermark — the sole security feature on this issue — was the standard safeguard for the period, though it offered limited protection against the relatively unsophisticated counterfeiting threats Ethiopia faced domestically in the 1950s.