500 Meticais Lion

Mozambique's 1989 commemorative program was issued during one of the most brutal phases of the RENAMO insurgency, when the country's formal economy had nearly collapsed and the metical itself was in freefall. Banco de Moçambique produced silver issues almost exclusively for the export collector market — hard currency the government desperately needed — while domestic circulation relied on increasingly worthless banknotes.

KM#110 belongs to a broader WWF-affiliated wildlife series that several African nations adopted through the late 1980s, with production typically handled by European minting contractors rather than any domestic facility.