Catalog
5000 Bipkwele
| Issuer | Banco de Guinea Ecuatorial |
|---|---|
| Year | 1979 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Ekwele (1975-1985) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANCO DE GUINEA ECUATORIAL MALABO, 3 DE AGOSTO DE 1979 Cinco Mil Bipkwele 5000 (Translation: Bank of Equatorial Guinea Malabo, August 3, 1979 Five Thousand Bipkwele) |
| Reverse description | Printed in blue and gray on a fine guilloche underprint. The central vignette presents a timber yard scene — a loaded logging truck and a mechanical crane handling felled timber logs, with a dense tropical forest as backdrop and moored boats visible at left; the caption EMBARCADERO DE MADERA appears below the vignette. Denomination numerals occupy the upper-left and lower-right corners within ornate rosette frames, with the bank name across the top and the value in words along the lower panel. |
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| Comments |
Equatorial Guinea's currency history between 1969 and 1985 is a compressed record of political catastrophe. The Bipkwele replaced the Ekwele in 1979, the same year Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo overthrew his uncle Francisco Macías Nguema — whose eleven-year dictatorship had reduced the country's professional class to near extinction through executions, exile, and forced labor. The new regime needed functioning institutions and functioning paper money simultaneously.
The 5000 Bipkwele was the series' highest denomination. FNMT in Madrid printed the issue, as Spain remained the practical supplier of banknote production for its former colony well into the post-independence period.