50 Centimes

French Guinea's 1917 emergency fractional notes were a direct consequence of wartime metal shortages that stripped West African colonies of their small change almost overnight. The Gouvernement Général's response was to authorize each colony to produce its own low-denomination paper, which is why nearly identical series appeared simultaneously across French West Africa — Guinea, Dahomey, Mauritania, and others — each distinguished primarily by the colonial name in the header.

The Gorée press, operating out of a small government facility on the island off Dakar, produced utilitarian colonial scrip rather than engraved banknote work. Survival rates are low; the notes were never meant to last.