5000 Kwanzas

Angola's 1991 5000 Kwanza note arrived during an acute phase of the civil war, when the MPLA government was burning through hard currency reserves and inflation was accelerating rapidly enough to make large-denomination notes obsolete almost immediately after printing. Thomas De La Rue produced the series in London under conditions where the Angolan state could barely guarantee distribution infrastructure in rebel-held territories.

The kwanza itself would be replaced by the kwanza reajustado in 1995 at a rate of 1000:1 — a ratio that tells you more about this note's purchasing-power trajectory than any circulation report could.