50 Cents Magnetic

The magnetic "a" variant of Uganda's 50 cents exists because the East African Currency Board, which had previously handled coinage for the region, dissolved in 1966, leaving newly independent Uganda scrambling to establish its own minting arrangements. By the mid-1970s, cost pressures pushed production toward steel-core planchets as a cheaper alternative to solid copper-nickel. KM#4a is the direct result of that shift — same dies, cheaper blank.

Idi Amin's government was in power during this striking, though monetary policy was the least of Uganda's institutional problems in 1976.