50 Meticais

The Banco de Moçambique issued this note during a period of acute economic strain — the country was fighting a destabilizing insurgency backed by apartheid-era South Africa, and by the mid-1980s inflation and goods shortages had made even low-denomination notes like this one functionally marginal in daily transactions.

The print run of just over 12 million is modest for a circulating denomination, consistent with the constrained printing budgets of the period. A single watermark is the only security provision — no security thread, no fluorescent features — which was typical of what Mozambique could commission at the time.