500 Francs Dakar

The Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale, established in 1901 as the currency authority for French West Africa, issued this series through an unusual institutional arrangement: the notes were produced by the Banque de France's own printing facilities, giving them a technical quality considerably above what colonial issues typically received. The Florian brothers — Frédéric and Ernest-Théophile — handled the engraving, a family pairing that appears across several BAO issues of the period.

Bellery-Desfontaines died in 1909, meaning his design work for the obverse was completed well before this note entered circulation, and was likely adapted from earlier preparatory work commissioned by the bank.