5000 Francs

Rwanda's 2004 series was the first major redesign since the country had rebuilt its central banking infrastructure following the 1994 genocide. The National Bank had resumed normal operations remarkably quickly given the scale of institutional collapse, and stabilizing the franc — and public confidence in it — required visible, credible currency. Giesecke & Devrient, long a supplier to African central banks, produced this note at their Leipzig facility.

The hologram strip on this denomination was a deliberate anti-counterfeiting measure aimed specifically at the higher-value notes in the series, which were most vulnerable to forgery in cross-border trade with Uganda and the DRC.